The Calculus BC exam is one of many Advanced Placement tests students at Whiteland Community High School take for a shot at college credit.
Calculus teacher Brian Lukich is used to this time of year being full of intensive prep for May, when students, typically in a classroom, try to put to paper all they had learned over the previous eight months. Students who score at least a three out of five on the exam will likely get credit for classes they would otherwise take in college.
But this year, for the first time, about 1,400 Johnson County students will be taking their Advanced Placement—commonly known as AP—exams, online. The move comes with a universal shift to virtual learning with the spread of COVID-19 and mass school closures across the country. Most local students have been out of school since March 19.
Now, in lieu of a more than three hour exam for most courses, those exams will be shortened to 45 minutes of online work, with one or two free-response questions and no multiple choice. For 2-D and 3-D art and design exams, as well as drawing, computer science principals, research and seminar, students will submit portfolios, but will not be required to take an online exam, according to the College Board.
Exams, which will take place from May 11 to May 22, will be open book tests, as proctors wouldn’t be there to prevent students from looking at their notes since the tests are online, said Bryan Passwater, a calculus teacher at Speedway High School who contributes video lessons to the College Board’s Advanced Placement YouTube channel.
Make-up dates for the tests are set for June 1 to June 5, according to the College Board.
“(The test) will be open book; they’re cognizant there’s no way to prevent students from (cheating),” Passwater said of the College Board. “To measure student understanding, they will write questions that will negate looking up things as a benefit. They will make it fast-paced. You can’t just look up a formula or Google something. It requires understanding beyond notes.”
Most courses will only include topics that were part of the curriculum through early March, after which schools across the country started closing their doors to students.
One notable exception is the Calculus BC exam. Since BC includes everything Calculus AB covers—and more—there would be nothing differentiating it from AB without a handful of topics from the final unit. To account for that, the AP is selecting five topics from that final unit to differentiate it from the Calculus AB exam, Passwater said.
Lukich, who had finished teaching his students the Calculus BC curriculum before classes moved online, thinks the shorter test will still be representative of how a student would have done on a full-length exam despite there being less room for error, he said.
“I’ve graded AP calculus exams in Kansas City the past couple of years and they share all kinds of data. I don’t think it will impact on the validity of the tests. (In past years), how kids did on two or three questions and the correlation with how they did on the entire exam was a near perfect match,” Lukich said.
“The College Board will pick questions similar to those used in the past that predicted scores. I believe it will be fair, but there will always be outliers where kids misinterpreted something. The scores will be about what they’ve always been.”
He has sent his students links to resources, such as College Board AP webinars.
Still, virtual education will never quite match face-to-face instruction, he said.
“A lot of the magic happens with interaction with students,” Lukich said. “They get to ask questions and I get to give feedback. I can still do that over Zoom or Google Meet, but I worry it won’t be as effective as face-to-face.”
AP teachers at Franklin Community High School will continue to emphasize and review material taught until March, said Laura Maddox, an assistant principal at the school.
“Not that they shouldn’t teach new material, but focus on essential things (students) learned up to early March,” Maddox said.
At Indian Creek Schools, teachers are encouraged to promote AP webinars and study guides published by the College Board, Assistant Superintendent Andy Cline said.
“Those will be pushed out by teachers as resources for those tests,” Cline said. “We’ll get that information in front of the kids so they can use them as they prepare for these exams.”
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Here is a look at this year’s AP exam length, structure and format:
• The exams will only include topics and skills most AP teachers and students have already covered in class by early March;
• This year’s AP Exams will be open book/open note;
• Most exams will have one or two free-response questions, and each question is timed separately. Students will need to write and submit their responses within the allotted time for each question;
• For most subjects, the exams will be 45 minutes long, and include an additional 5 minutes for uploading. Students will need to access the online testing system 30 minutes early to get set up;
• Students will be able to take exams on any device they have access to—computer, tablet, or smartphone. They will be able to either type and upload their responses or write responses by hand and submit a photo via their cell phone;
• Students taking AP world language and culture exams will complete two spoken tasks consistent with free-response questions three and four on the current AP Exam; written responses will not be required.
Source: College Board
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Here is a look at how many students are enrolled in AP courses at each of the county’s six public school districts:
Center Grove: 578
Clark-Pleasant: 375
Edinburgh: 36
Franklin: 174
Greenwood: 86
Nineveh-Hensley-Jackson: 134
Source: Indiana Department of Education
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