I was thinking about this thread all day today. I’m attending the National Advanced Placement (AP) Conference in Boston this week.
One of the big pushes in the last 5-10 years by College Board is that ‘AP is for everyone’. They’ve introduced some new classes with that in mind, e.g. Precalculus and Seminar, and I think everyone acknowledges that they have also lowered some of the score bars in AP grading.
(I think an eyes-wide-open view of this must include the fact that in pushing this, CB not only gets to make a social justice claim but also gets to widely increase its business, particularly in poor districts where the state/school pays AP exam fees regardless of the kids scoring well or even taking the exams. Although CB is technically non-profit, they have year-over-year positive revenue flow in the billions and extremely highly-paid executives.)
Two of the side effects of this democratization are:
HYPSM and others (Columbia e.g. which I looked into for my nephew) have dramatically reduced what AP credits they give course credit for. The difference was stark even from when my DS1 started applying in fall, 2015, to when he enrolled in 2016 (Princeton dropped CS and a History IIRC) through DS2 at MIT starting in 2020 (they took almost nothing but did accept a few) to DS3 who would have gotten almost no credit at those schools, but does get a lot (not as much as 10 years ago) for UMD this fall.
Some high schools are using it as a point of pride that they “don’t do AP”. I happen to think this is ridiculous, that as a Chemistry Reader I know that the course is still a very solid chemistry course and the swanky schools should be able to get excellent scores for their kids.
Both of these factors seem to me to demonstrate that once the “cool” thing is owned commonly, it’s not as “cool” anymore to have gotten it. After all, exclusivity is part of the cachet.
BUT - I think the basic problem isn’t originating with academic elitism. I think the problem is that our country is super unequal, and generally effort doesn’t make as much difference as we wish it did. Well, but actually, eggheads could get ahead with their smartypantsness in earlier decades. That was resented by people (I am voting likely the wealth-elite, but I think the motivation for this thread was a hypothesis that it was the education-non-elites).
But. No matter how many new not-so-collegiate AP exams get invented, there are still the same number of “smarter than average” people and it’s not more people than it was before those new exams. I’m not sure where I’m going with this, except to say that I kept seeing everything at the Conference through the lens of this conversation.
This I did not know! It’s also very disappointing, as I live in a state where a 3 is considered sufficient mastery of the class. But if a 3 no longer has the meaning that it used to, then that just lowered part of the state’s standards.
The latter part is very true. It’s one of the things some people in educational administration are trying to shed a light on. A number of high schools with high numbers of economically disadvantaged students will tout how they offer AP classes. In reality, however, those classes are nowhere near the rigor of AP standards and is confirmed when seeing how many students (don’t) take the test and/or how many of them receive a 3+. In case anyone is wondering, the percentages are quite low.
“This I did not know! It’s also very disappointing, as I live in a state where a 3 is considered sufficient mastery of the class. But if a 3 no longer has the meaning that it used to, then that just lowered part of the state’s standards.”
Yes! I heard it from the horse’s mouth today, but Readers have noticed for a few years now. The official line is that they match a 5 to an average college A, a 4 to that B, etc., and that there has been grade inflation at colleges on average. Not only does a 3 not mean what it used to (frankly a C doesn’t mean what it used to either), but there are also new AP courses that are sort of questionably college level, or let me say, that would have not been considered college level in the olden days.
“A number of high schools with high numbers of economically disadvantaged students will tout how they offer AP classes. In reality, however, those classes are nowhere near the rigor of AP standards”
This is a major challenge that is part of my career right now.
I spent a few minutes looking at some AP exam score distributions in past years. For anyone who doesn’t know, you can easily find past score distributions here on College Board (the main page shows distributions for 2025, but clicking on the exam name gives you a page with history for that exam): 2025 AP Score Distributions – AP Students | College Board
It seems that there is some variation among exams. But I only looked at the exams my kids took, since I’m mostly interested in those
AP Lang: Grading scale seems to have changed in 2025. Percent with 3 and above is 74% for 2025, in previous years this was between 55%-60%.
APUSH: Grading scale seems to have changed in 2024. Percent with 3 and above is 72-73% for 2024-2025, in previous years this was between 47%-58%.
AP US Gov: Grading scale seems to have changed in 2024. Percent with 3 and above is 72-73% for 2024-2025, in previous years this was between 48%-57%.
AP Macroeconomics: Grading scale does not seem to have changed significantly.
AP Calc BC: Grading scale does not seem to have changed significantly. This was already a test where 70-80%+ of students were earning 3+ as far back as 2002 when the historical data stops.
AP Bio: Seems like the grading scale might have changed in 2022 when the percentage of students earning 5 increased, however the total number of students earning 3+ hasn’t jumped up that much.
AP Chem: Grading scale seems to have changed in 2023. Percent with 3 and above is 75-78% for 2023-2025, in previous years this was between 52-59%.
AP Physics C (both exams): I don’t see an increase in students earning 3+ here (if anything, it seems notable that there was a large decrease in students earning a 5 on these exams in 2025), but this is another course where most students were already earning 3+.
Most everything in life is about the money - and as we know, non profit doesn’t mean no profit - lots of non profit execs and employees rake in far more than for profit businesses.
Exactly. No one (at least not in higher ed, probably no one in HS ed) believes that CB is interested in it for social justice reasons. There are many students with A’s in an AP course who get 1 or 2 on the AP test.
Well, at the Conference, there is a bit of a parallel reality when the social justice claim is made incessantly. I actually spoke to one of the “higher-ups” after his presentation on it and I am worried I’ll get in trouble, but I came from a place of being highly invested in the AP program both in my school and for my own children, so hopefully it will be OK.
I teach APCSA and read (grade) the FRQs. I train my students with 4 as the goal. Those who earn 4 and 5 definitely get close to 100 as their high school class grades; however, because of the district and school grading policies and unspoken rules, those who earn 1 can (and likely) have passing grades. On paper, the school needs to show that the students “succeeded” in all classes because funding counts on it.
My students know that a 5 in APCSP is perceived differently to a 5 in APCSA, so is a 5 in AP Precal compared to AP Cal AB or BC. However, when the school runs reports, all AP courses are tallied together to make the numbers look good.
On the other hand, there seems to be less pressure than ever for top students, applying to top colleges, to take all the tests associated with the AP or equivalent classes they complete. Better students are now just testing in the subjects that they might pursue in college. Nobody is impressed when someone gets a 3 or 4 in an AP-lite. And it is less likely to than it use to be to allow for someone to waive a class in college anyway.
I mean, I guess it will be in the eye of the CC intellectual elite beholder But I would certainly include precalculus, seminar, and some of the new proposals like business. OTOH you guys are not wrong that human geography and even environmental science never had the elite associations that some of the others did.
I see the changes in AP as contributing to more of a divide in intellectual “rankings,” ironically. I’m not sure what can be done. I wish that there were still the impressiveness in AP achievement, so that students who really have that as their path to success, would still have that path. If AP is devalued, then the smart/poor kids lose yet another way out.
I think AP courses still have value and demonstrate rigor, at least from many high schools.
The issue seems to be at schools that don’t gatekeep access to APs (either thru testing and/or pre-reqs) and/or aren’t able to provide teachers who are familiar with and/or have the capability to teach the AP curriculum. These are often the schools where a significant proportion of students score 1 or 2 on the AP tests (while often getting an A in the class), and sadly many of these schools are often Title 1 and/or other disadvantaged schools.
