AP tests go online, become shorter amid COVID-19 pandemic

Andrew Zutler, a senior in the Plainview-Old Bethpage district, studies on Saturday for AP exams. Credit: Zachary Zutler
High-achieving students on Long Island and around the globe are turning this week to an abbreviated version of Advanced Placement tests designed for online use at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most of the bite-sized AP exams, taken by high school students, consist of one or two questions and require just 45 minutes to complete. In contrast, the traditional tests used until now had required three hours to finish.
The launch of testing Monday got off to a bumpy start. Test sponsors at the Manhattan-based College Board said about 1,000 students worldwide taking a Physics C Mechanics exam, or 2% of those participating, encountered glitches in trying to submit their test answers electronically, and would be offered a chance to retake tests in June.
Additional students were offered a makeup test in United States Government and Politics.
At the close of Tuesday’s testing, College Board officials said that more than a million students took exams and that less than 1% overall encountered technical difficulties.
On Long Island, some school administrators and parent activists described the difficulties as traumatic for students directly affected.
“I am not certain that the College Board recognizes the impact on these kids when suggesting they simply take the exam again in June,” said Jim Polansky, superintendent of Huntington schools, adding that the College Board should outline plans for preventing such problems from reoccurring.
Supporters say the mini-APs essentially serve to recognize students' hard work, at a time when other assessments, such as New York State's Regents exams, have been called off. As in the past, students who score 3 or better on a scale of 1 to 5 may earn college credit.
Skeptics, however, question whether the revised APs have been watered down, and whether reliance on at-home testing could jeopardize test security.
College Board officials said they surveyed 18,000 students before launching the online project, and that 91% of respondents backed the idea. Sponsors add they have taken multiple steps to discourage cheating, including the increased use of essay-style questions that require advanced analytical skills to answer.
"We want to give every student the chance to earn the college credit they're worked toward," said Trevor Packer, senior vice president for College Board's AP programs.
AP tests serve as a benchmark for success in Nassau and Suffolk counties, where neighboring high schools often compete for national rankings based on students' scores. More than 78,000 exams were administered across the region in 2018, the latest year on record — up 6.3% from results two years earlier.
Online testing is scheduled to continue through May 22, with about 3.3 million students participating worldwide. A total of 38 redesigned tests are offered.
Andrew Zutler, 17, a senior in the Plainview-Old Bethpage district, signed up for three exams this year and was surprised by the redesign.
"We've been working all year, and we've been hoping for payoff, so I guess we're grateful to have the opportunity to earn the college credit that we've been working for," Zutler said in a phone interview. "But it's frustrating that it's not in the same format that we were expecting."
Some educators contend the 45 minutes allotted for answering essay questions leaves little time for thoughtful responses.
Michael Cohen of Brightwaters, who has spent more than 40 years teaching calculus and prepping students for exams, said he was "flabbergasted" to learn that this year's AP tests would be limited to two questions. In past years, he said, calculus tests typically consisted of 45 multiple-choice questions and six additional questions requiring written answers.
The veteran educator noted that this year's exam fee of $94 remains the same as last year's. AP and related instruction is the College Board’s biggest revenue source, generating nearly $483 million in 2018, according to the agency’s latest federal income form for tax-exempt organizations.
"It's very hard for me to see this as anything but a cash grab," Cohen said. "These are watered-down versions of a test deemed the gold standard over a period of many years. How can you take this seriously?"
A College Board representative responded that the agency had invested in a new, secure online testing platform to handle the revised exams, while also developing “capacity for thousands of educators to read and score students’ responses online."
Test security is also an issue. Rob Franek, editor-in-chief for Princeton Review, a national tutoring and test-prep company, said the question uppermost in students' minds these days could be summed up in three words: "What about cheating?"
Franek, in a video presentation posted on his company’s YouTube channel, said the type of cheating that worried students most was not plagiarism or copying answers off crib sheets. Rather, he said, it was fear that teenagers from wealthy homes might gain unfair advantage by hiring ringers to take tests on their behalf.
Such tactics were employed in last year's "Varsity Blues" scandal that captured national headlines. In that case, dozens of influential parents, including Hollywood celebrities, were charged with paying millions in bribes to a California college-prep firm to help their offspring gain admission to selective colleges.
Franek went on to say in his video that, whatever a few privileged families might do, he expected the vast majority of students to take exams "fairly and squarely."
The College Board, for its part, wants people to know it is on the lookout for cheaters. Packer, in a recent tweet, said his agency had canceled AP exam registrations for a "ring" of students who were developing plans to cheat.
"It's not worth the risk of having your name reported to college admissions offices," the College Board executive warned students.