If you are currently taking an AP course (or if your child is enrolled in an AP course), take note:
Starting with the 2011 testing session, there will be no points deducted for incorrect answers.
Here is a blurb from the New York Times discussing the change:
IF you don’t know the answer, guess.
Come May, the next sitting for Advanced Placement exams, the College Board is switching to right-only scoring: each correct answer counts; no deductions for wrong ones. By guessing, you have a 20 or 25 percent chance of getting it right, depending on the number of answer choices.
Additionally, all prospective AP students should be aware that the AP History and AP Biology curriculums will be completely revamped by the 2012-2013 school year:
A.P. teachers have long complained that lingering for an extra 10 or 15 minutes on a topic can be a zero-sum game, squeezing out something else that needs to be covered for the exam. PowerPoint lectures are the rule. The homework wears down many students. And studies show that most schools do the same canned laboratory exercises, providing little sense of the thrill of scientific discovery.
All that, says the College Board, is about to change.
Next month, the board, the nonprofit organization that owns the A.P. exams as well as the SAT, will release a wholesale revamping of A.P. biology as well as United States history — with 387,000 test takers the most popular A.P. subject. A preview of the changes shows that the board will slash the amount of material students need to know for the tests and provide, for the first time, a curriculum framework for what courses should look like. The goal is to clear students’ minds to focus on bigger concepts and stimulate more analytic thinking. In biology, a host of more creative, hands-on experiments are intended to help students think more like scientists.
The changes, which are to take effect in the 2012-13 school year, are part of a sweeping redesign of the entire A.P. program. Instead of just providing teachers with a list of points that need to be covered for the exams, the College Board will create these detailed standards for each subject and create new exams to match.
If you are a student – or a parent of a student – who is currently enrolled in an AP course, we urge you to consider C2 Education Carrollton as your tutoring resource. Our lead instructor is kept up to date on all changes in test administration and content and has helped many students – including English-language-learners – receive higher scores.
C2 Education, Carrollton Center
1001 East Hebron Parkway Suite 114
Carrollton, TX. 75010
Phone: 214-483-3800
Fax: 214-483-3802
www.c2carrollton.com
www.facebook.com/c2Carrollton
