Should AP tests in AP classes exist graded on the AP curve?

Should AP tests in AP classes be graded on the AP curve?

February 27, 2022

AP classes are the highest level of form offered at Schreiber. They are at a college level of difficulty, and the exams reverberate this difficulty. Therefore, teachers should factor the difficulty of exams into their grading processes.

The AP exams that occur at the end of the twelvemonth for AP classes are graded similarly to a bell curve.  The grades on an AP examination do not follow the typical 0 to 100 or letter grading scales.  Instead, students are given grades between one and five, with v beingness the highest.  The College Board, the arrangement that creates, distributes, administers, and grades all AP exams, uses a bell bend for good reason.  Due to the challenging nature of the constantly evolving and changing annual AP tests, it is at times truly impossible to compare students' functioning from year to year.  Therefore, when grading the exams, a curve is used such that roughly 12 to 20 percent of students receive a five, while 8 to 20 percentage receive a one.  From at that place, generally xv to 25 percent of test-takers obtain a two or a iv, and the final 30 to forty percent, which brand upwards the largest proportion of examination scores, earn a three.

The reason the exams are curved this manner is because many colleges provide course credit to students who receive a four or 5 on an exam.  If the test were easier one year in comparison to previous years, how would universities utilise AP test scores to assess students' mastery of the curriculum in these courses?  The goal of curving the exams in this style is to ensure a uniform grading system in which every student earns a standardized grade.

The majority of students in Schreiber enrolled in these college-level courses have at one point or another taken an exam where the unabridged class averaged in the mid-70s or lower, despite the students having studied h​​ard to larn the material on the test.  If teachers want their students' grades to reverberate their effort and mastery of coursework, they should grade our exams using the same method the College Board uses to grade our AP tests.

This would not be a completely new style of grading for Schreiber every bit a whole, though. Mr. Thom Johnson curves the tests in his AP Physics C grade similarly. AP Physics C is regarded every bit one of the nearly difficult classes in Schreiber, which makes it the perfect course to set a precedent for bong curve grading.

A bell curve could as well increase fairness by accounting for potential fluctuations in the difficulty of each test; some tests are harder than others, and poorer performance on harder tests doesn't necessarily indicate poorer grasp of the coursework.  The likelihood of bookish dishonesty would also subtract considering students would exist discouraged from sharing test answers with classmates taking the test after them.  Further, Schreiber states that AP classes are encouraged for students considering the difficulty experienced in an AP grade will ready them for the difficulty of classes in higher.  This type of scoring encourages teachers to challenge students by making tests more circuitous, requiring the ability to recollect critically and solve problems, rather than just rote memorization, considering the grades students receive will not depend strictly on the difficulty of the exam.

Schreiber gives a GPA bump for AP or honors classes on the premise that these classes accept a higher difficulty, and maintaining a B+ has the aforementioned level of difficulty of maintaining an A+ in a standard, less rigorous course.  Every bit AP classes tend to exist even more demanding than honors classes, this thinking should be farther extended to individual tests in AP classes, which would ensure that students' grades would reverberate their mastery of the coursework.