Is a 5 on the AP test = A?

mimk6
Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:59:14 +0000

At my son’s school, some teachers do retroactively change grades. They are clear about how this works at the beginning of the year. Some teachers will change a grade one grade up for one semester, etc. I think it’s reasonable to do because the AP exam is what these kids work towards all year. For both the teacher and the students, the true measure of how well the material was taught and learned is the AP exam because the test comprehensively covers the curriculum of that course. The fact that the grades don’t come out until July is a logistical challenge, but it isn’t unreasonable to correlate performance on that exam to performance in the class or to include it as part of the class. It reflects how much the kid studied and how well the kid learned. At my son’s school, the kids are expected to take the exam. And it’s not just the kids who are being evaluated. The school looks at pass rates of various teachers and considers that when assigning courses. A good pass rate is a point of pride for the teachers as well as the students. Offering a high AP score as “extra credit” or a change in grade is a powerful incentive for students who care about their grades. The kids at our school take the test very seriously and stay after school to study and even spend a weekend at “Bio Camp” or “Calculus Camp” where they study and prepare for the exam. The fact is, that out of my three kids, I don’t think one of them ever used a score to change a grade – a high test score seems to correlate to a high grade in the class in the first place.