<p><em>Edit</em>: “Hardest” is supposed to be “Harder” <em>End Edit</em></p>
<p>So in about a week and a half I’m going to take the AP Biology Exam. After looking at the grade distribution, I saw that 1/3 people get a 1 on it. Besides that startling fact, I also saw the grade distribution of the tests of the previous years. Apparently the the grade distributions were pretty even at about %20 (±%3) for each score until the 2008 exam. I’ve also seen this for similar exams.
Can somebody shed some light on this?</p>
<p>More people are taking AP Exams. More students means more teachers. But, many of these teachers are new and inexperienced. Plus, some of these students new to AP don’t know the difficulty of the exams, and don’t work hard enough to pass them.</p>
<p>AP used to be a bit elitist, if you want to put it that way; only affluent or incredibly bright kids took AP, and these classes were offered only at schools where there were enough rich/smart kids to take them (so not many). Now, with more kids taking AP, there will be more 1’s than 5’s, since many of these new students don’t work hard enough to pass.</p>