March 20, 2020
As schools and communities navigate the unprecedented challenges posed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the health and safety of educators and students are the AP Program’s top priorities. Here’s how we’re supporting schools:
Through our members across the country, we understand the new time constraints on everyone in the education community. These solutions are meant to be as simple and lightweight as possible for both students and teachers — without creating additional burdens for school leaders during this time.
- Traditional face-to-face exam administrations will not take place. Students will take a 45-minute online free-response exam at home.
- Some students may want to take the exam sooner rather than later, while the content is still fresh. Other students may want more time to practice. For each AP subject, there will be 2 different testing dates.
The full exam schedule, specific free-response question types that will be on each AP Exam, and additional testing details will be available by April 3. We'll also unlock any relevant free-response questions in AP Classroom for digital use so students can access all practice questions of the type that will appear on the exam.
About This Year’s AP Exams
Students remain eager to take AP Exams and to have a chance to earn credit and placement. We surveyed 18,000 AP students and 91% indicated they want to complete this important step, urging us not to cancel this opportunity they have been working toward.
We’ll continue to support students with free resources through exam day. And while we encourage students to wait until closer to the test date to decide, any student already registered for an exam can choose to cancel at no charge.
The AP Program will invest heavily over the next month in the following ways:
- For the 2019–20 exam administration only, students can take a 45-minute online free-response exam at home. Educator-led development committees are currently selecting the exam questions that will be administered.
- AP curricula are locally developed and we defer to local decisions on how best to help students complete coursework. To be fair to all students, some of whom have lost more instructional time than others, the exam will only include topics and skills most AP teachers and students have already covered in class by early March.
- Colleges support this solution and are committed to ensuring that AP students receive the credit they have worked this year to earn. For decades, colleges have accepted a shortened AP Exam for college credit when groups of students have experienced emergencies.
- Students will be able to take these streamlined exams on any device they have access to—computer, tablet, or smartphone. Taking a photo of handwritten work will also be an option.
- We recognize that the digital divide could prevent some low-income and rural students from participating. Working with partners, we will invest so that these students have the tools and connectivity they need to review AP content online and take the exam. If your students need mobile tools or connectivity, you can reach out to us directly to let us know.
Test security is a concern.
- The exam questions are designed and administered in ways that prevent cheating; we use a range of digital security tools and techniques, including plagiarism detection software, to protect the integrity of the exams.
- Scoring at-home work for an AP Exam is not new to the AP Program. For years the AP Program has received and scored at-home student work as part of the exams for the AP Computer Science Principles and AP Capstone courses.
* This information will be posted here by Friday, April 3.
** It will not be possible to provide subscores this year.
Instructional Support
Beginning on Wednesday, March 25, students and teachers can attend free, live AP review courses, delivered by AP teachers from across the country. These mobile-friendly classes are:
- Designed to be used alongside work that may be given by schools.
- Will be recorded and available on-demand so teachers and students can access them any time.
- Not dependent on current AP teachers continuing instruction. We know many AP teachers now face challenges that would make that impossible.
- Will focus on reviewing the skills and concepts from the first 75% of the course. There will also be some supplementary lessons including topics from the final 25% of the course.
Teachers who are providing remote instruction can continue to leverage AP Classroom, which we introduced at the start of the school year.
- Within AP Classroom, free-response questions that were only available for in-classroom use due to security concerns will now be unlocked.
- Teachers will be able to assign questions to students digitally.
Here is a one-page overview (.pdf/514KB) of how AP teachers can use the free, daily online practice in AP Classroom to help students prepare for exam day.
AP teachers can access these additional resources to help them get set up with AP Classroom:
- Foundations. Learn how AP Classroom complements the new AP course and exam descriptions and offers students opportunities for practice and feedback throughout the year.
- AP Classroom Demo. See a click-through demonstration of AP Classroom, which highlights how to assign, score, and interpret results from Topic Questions, Personal Progress Checks, and teacher-created assignments and quizzes from the AP Question Bank.
- AP Quick Start Videos. Watch short tutorials on the recent features added to AP Classroom.
AP Services for Educators
Email: apexams@info.collegeboard.org
Email: apexams-intl@info.collegeboard.org (for educators outside the United States)
Phone: +1-877-274-6474 or +1-212-632-1781