by Graham Skinker ‘21

College Board recently announced that they will be administering full length AP exams for the 2020-2021 school year. This announcement comes as a surprise to many considering College Board offered abbreviated AP exams to students for the 2019-20 school year, a year in which students had the full in-person learning experience for over 3/4 of the school year. In their announcement, College Board stated that if health and safety conditions allow, then exams may be administered in person. If not, then the AP coordinator will offer a full-length digital exam to be taken virtually. College Board further explained that there will be no cancelation fee for students this year and that AP Classroom will have live online review sessions from April 19-30 to help students better understand the material covered on the test. 

There are several issues with the College Board’s full length exam this year. First, there is a lot of uncertainty concerning whether exams will be able to be administered in person. If tests are administered virtually, there is once again the issue of students communicating with each other, cheating, and using notes during testing. Many students, myself included, were able to safely take the SAT or ACT in person over the past few months, showing that tests can be safely administered. However, while there is strong evidence suggesting exams should be able to be safely administered in person come May, there is no certainty that they will be. While last year’s abbreviated exams were open note this year’s full length AP exams will likely not be open note. This raises several issues of the fairness of this year’s exams. If some students are taking exams administered in person and others are taking them at home, how can the College Board monitor whether students taking the exams at home are using notes? 

Another reason this announcement is surprising, to say the least, is that this year’s online learning is a completely new challenge for everyone. Many students are struggling to completely understand and master the material. Although teachers are trying their best to prepare students for the AP exams in May, there just isn’t enough time and the material isn’t as effectively taught or understood as it would be in-person. For instance, students in language courses like AP Literature and AP Language and Composition aren’t able to practice the skills needed to be successful on the exams. In a normal environment students in these courses would likely be practicing either multiple choice questions and writing essays once a week to prepare for the AP exam. However, with classes only being held twice a week, students are not getting the necessary practice needed to be successful on the exams. 

With all factors taken into consideration, the College Board should offer abbreviated exams similar to those given last year. This would give students the best opportunity to earn college credit, and exams would be safely administered at home as they were in 2020.