Update: As of July 2024, College Board has added a new explanation for the change in scores. This recalibration is designed to ensure that all AP exams have the same 60-80% success rates (meaning students scoring a 3 or higher). Check out this great blog from Marco Learning for a deep dive into their methodology.
AP score release day is always a big deal for students. It looks a little different in 2024 than it used to: students post score reveal TikToks; College Board shares score distributions on X (formerly Twitter). Many students take the tests digitally rather than on paper. But all these technology and cultural changes may be hiding a potentially more seismic change: the “recalibration” of the scoring of several of the exams, leading to millions more high school students earning college credits via AP exams in the coming years.
Wait, what’s going on here?
AP scores are set to relate to student performance in college. Since 2022, College Board has adjusted and recalibrated the scoring for 7 different AP Exams: AP English Literature, AP World History, AP Biology, AP Chemistry, AP European History, AP U.S. History, and AP U.S. Government. These recalibrations led to (in many cases) substantially different distributions in student scores. Check out this graph of % of students scoring a 4 or 5 (the scores most likely to earn college credit) from Marco Learning:
Take a look at AP U.S. History, for example. The full data from College Board shows a full 72% of students taking the exam earned at least a 3 (qualifying them for college credit). Last year, that number was only 47.5%. Nearly half a million students take that test each year. More than 100,000 students earned scores qualifying them for college credit in 2024 than in 2023.
But Why?
College Board has telegraphed this move for a while; they compared the relative “pass rates” on different tests at their conference in 2023. They found very different results between different tests:
Tests with High Pass Rates (% of students scoring 3 or higher) | Tests with Low Pass Rates (% of students scoring 3 or higher)
AP Seminar (88%) AP English Literature (77%) AP Chemistry (75%) AP Biology (64%) AP Computer Science Principles (68%) AP World History (65%) | AP English Language (56%) AP Physics 1 (45%) AP Environmental Science (53%) AP U.S. History (48%) AP U.S. Government & Pol (49%)
They also shared data from teacher surveys—67% of AP teachers voted that the standards to achieve a score of 3+ on AP English Language, AP Physics 1, AP Environmental Science, AP US History, and AP US Government were too high. The ostensible goal of this recalibration is to better align the expectations of the AP program with college grades and success.
If that’s the case, however, why haven’t AP English Language, AP Physics, and AP Environmental Science exams seen similar recalibrations? And why the huge jump in scores for tests that already had relatively high pass rates, like AP Chemistry?
In addition, College Board has been pushing more and more students to take AP examsbased on research in the name of equity. They claim that taking the courses shows significant benefit even for students who do not earn college credit based on their exam scores. That means these higher pass rates are providing college course credit to even more students (including more low-income students) than ever before; more than 5 million students took AP exams this year.
What’s the Cost?
More college credit for low-income students sounds great—but is it coming at the cost of rigor? The goal of the AP program is to provide college credit to qualified students. Is this recalibration a reflection of grade inflation at the college level—if it’s easier to pass a college-level course, the corresponding AP class doesn’t need to be so hard. But is that a good thing? Is it becoming a clearer reflection of necessary skills at the college level—or is College Board lowering the bar?
We’ll continue to watch the progression of recalibrated exams in future years.
