What are your thoughts on the new test format?

The AP says that the AP test is a way for students to get ahead in college. In practice, that’s almost never the case. Specifically for my course, if you take the Physics C exam, the mechanics and E&M exam, it’s usually because you’re going to go into an engineering, physics or mathematics background, and most schools with those technical programs don’t allow you to pass out of any courses due to this test. And specifically the physics class tends to be a weed-out course, so they don’t use my test. So when I went to college, I didn’t get to pass out of any Calculus, even though I got a 5 on the AP Calculus exam, but I did get to pass out of the Engineering Calculus class and into the Mathematics majors course. So it was the same level, but the higher tier of that same level. With respect to the test itself, it’s going to matter as little as it would have mattered. But one of the things that AP is going to have to figure out over the next month is how to administer this test with any sort of security at all. Because as great as it is to say, ‘your parents signed this sheet saying you completed in 45 minutes without any access to any outside device,’ who’s to say that your handwriting doesn’t look like theirs, or your siblings, right? Who knows?

How is your class staying on track?

So, Ms. Mangan [Physics 1&2] and I just made a video that we posted for our AP students. But as far as my class goes, I’m not at all worried about where we’re at, because one of the benefits to the way that Brookline does AP Physics is that we teach what is ostensibly two courses over the course of one year. So I’ve taught all of the Mechanics exam, and I’ve taught a big chunk of the E&M material. When you look at the content that they’ve truncated from the Mechanics test, it’s not going to matter for my students because they’ve done all of mechanics. And what they’ve truncated from the E&M course also doesn’t really matter to my students, but I do have about a chapter and a half left to teach of what’s going to be on the test. Mangan, on the other hand, for AP 1&2, her textbook doesn’t go in the same order as the units defined by the AP exam, so she’s covered everything in the AP 1 test, but has only covered 2 units in the AP 2 test, as opposed to the 4 or 5 that AP wants her to do. And that’s because at a normal school, they would have had from September to March to cover everything in that course because it’s a senior class. But as it stands right now, we’ve been directed by the school not to do new content. And that’s for a plethora of reasons, like equity behind students being able to access the learning. So what the curriculum coordinators decided was that we were going to make all of the AP resources available. There’s a bunch of stuff in the AP classrooms, and I’ve opened up all of that material to everybody, so they can access it at whatever rate they can and want to, and they can study whatever parts of it they want to. It’s all in the air right now. But one thing I’m sure of is that whatever day we come back to school, I will pick back up with the content from where we stopped. We were right in the middle of Chapter 25, so I will start Chapter 25 again at that point. Unless I get told something different, that’s how I’m going to take it.

How will these changes affect the college process for juniors?

Because of the competitive nature of getting into these schools, so many people are taking high level classes anyway that it’s kind of the lowest bar. So from that point it’s kind of like, what are you doing with it on your own? So for my class, it’s not just that we’re learning mechanics and E&M, we’re also using a bit of computer programming. How we’re learning physics, I think, matters more, and I would encourage juniors to write about that instead of just: ‘I took AP.’ Because our AP class is very different from many other AP classes.

What do you think could have been done to improve the current situation?