The AP exams have been unsurprisingly altered once again for the 2015-2016 school year. It seems that every year, the Advanced Placement (AP) examinations offered by the College Board increase in difficulty extensively, with students struggling to pass the exams for subjects considered effortless by college standards. Two courses in particular, AP Art History and AP European History, have had sharp declines in their pass rates in recent years. According to the College Board, in 2013, 60.6% of students passed the AP Art History exam; however, this number decreased to 59.6% in 2014, and to 57.6% in 2015. Likewise, AP European History has seen a 0.7% decrease in pass rates between 2013 and 2015. Overall, the number of students taking the exams each year did not increase too heavily, with 2,218,578 people completing the exam the 2012-2013 school years compared to 2,342,548 the 2013-2014 school year.

AP scholars who have taken part in AP classes in the past know that due to the excessive and unpredictable difficulty of the exams each year, the College Board makes constant changes to the exams annually, some larger than others. In the past five years, AP classes such as AP U.S. History, AP Calculus AB, AP Calculus BC, AP Chemistry, and AP Biology courses have all been altered for various reasons. Most of the time officials from the College Board claim the revisions are so that the tests will be less of a task of memorization, but rather an assessment of adaptability to changing situations that occur in reality. An example of this was the redesign of the AP Biology exam in 2012 which was allegedly changed to allow for a more hands-on approach to the exam.  

Unsurprisingly, the event has occurred again with the AP Art History and AP European History exams. Interestingly, while most AP exam changes in the past have been relatively minor, these exams are seeing absolute redesigns for reasons not explicitly given. The College Board has claimed that while the AP European History exam is being changed to allow for more analytical thinking in the open-ended questions, the AP Art History course is reworked to only feature 250 images that will be on the exam rather than the roughly 1,000 images from years’ past. Each of the changes are exceedingly major, and so some may wonder if the sudden re-evaluations of the exams were due to the noticeable drop in the pass rates of the exams in recent years.

Former AP Art History teacher, Louis Harley, said, “In the past, I believe that the College Board made the AP Art History exam too difficult considering the Art History course in college is only a semester long…For example, last year, there was a quilt on the exam that was extremely obscure and therefore no student could identify it.”  Harley went on to say that based on the vast shift in content on the exam, which is a change from 1,000 images to 250 images this year, it will be interesting whether or not teachers will be able to alter their approach to teaching the class the current year.

Joseph Pinkelman took up the reigns this year to teaching the AP Art History class,strives to take a different approach to instructing the class, similar to what Harley had implicated. Pinkelman said, “There were so many images [in previous years] students had to be prepared for when taking the AP exam and more times than not the College Board would ask about some minor, insignificant work. It was very frustrating…this year with only 250 images I’m hoping that the exam is more manageable.”

In order to adapt to the new structure of the exam, Pinkelman is using a more hands-on approach to the class, rather than constant lecturing which was done in previous years. Dougan  Miller, AP European History teacher, seems to think that for the AP European History course, the exams have been arduous as well. Nevertheless, he feels that the questions are not as improbable as those on the AP Art History exam, specifically the essay questions on the exam.

He said, “The test is hard enough…[But for the essays], it usually all works out. We cover everything, so whatever the essays are, the students are ready for them.”

Miller also noted the obvious similarities in the redesign of the AP European History exam to the AP U.S. History exams in past years, as the questions are becoming more logical rather than the purely objective questions from previous years.

Instructors of both of the redesigned exams concur that the exams have been frustratingly laborious, and students seem to agree on this fact as well. Junior Angela Yang, who took both the class last year, said, “For AP European History, I think Mr. Miller did a good job preparing us for the exam and the prep books were useful also. For AP Art History, the test was much harder than the information in the prep book and there was a lot of information not in the textbook either.”

She agrees that the AP Art History exam was a ridiculous impediment, though felt prepared for the AP European History exam. This coincides with the information provided by the College Board that pass rates for the AP Art History course are falling far faster than for the AP European History course. Nevertheless, it seems that the difficulty of the AP exams in general has certainly seen its effect on the pass rates of students nationally. Whether or not the recent redesigns will prove beneficial for students is yet to be seen, though one can only be optimistic and hope that the changes will prove advantageous for all high school students.

Two courses in particular, AP Art History and AP European History, have had sharp declines in their pass rates in recent years. According to the College Board, in 2013, 60.6% of students passed the AP Art History exam; however, this number decreased to 59.6% in 2014, and to 57.6% in 2015. Likewise, AP European History has seen a 0.7% decrease in pass rates between 2013 and 2015. Overall, the number of students taking the exams each year did not increase too heavily, with 2,218,578 people completing the exam the 2012-2013 school years compared to 2,342,548 the 2013-2014 school year.