As I like to think I was all year, I'm going to be honest...these scores were better than I anticipated. The practice exam was pretty rough and the results were a little discouraging. However, many of you showed substantial improvement from the practice to real exam and I think there were probably a couple of reasons for that (which I'll get to later).
First, a little bit of a breakdown of the scores. In order to respect people's privacy, I'm not going to give a breakdown of how many of each score we had 1-5. I will tell you though that we had nine 5's which ties the record for most 5's since I've been teaching this course. We also had 39% of students score a 4 or 5 which is well beyond the national average. I can also tell you that our average was a 2.913 which is pretty strong given the number of people we had take the exam. And as I mentioned yesterday, this year's exam had the most people score a 3 and above since I've been doing this (and likely in the history of the school).
So why were the scores so much higher than the practice exam? A huge factor likely was the fact that while I created new cut scores based on what the College Board said would happen, I don't think they made the changes on this exam. The second week of summer I attended a 4 day workshop of APUSH teachers and we were told that the essay scores were roughly the same as last year as was the breakdown of 1-5's. So it seems that the real exam used a more student friendly rubric than the one I used. I thought that might be a possibility, but my philosophy in teaching AP has been that if I'm going to error, I'm going to error on the side of being too hard rather than too easy. :)
I also think a lot of you just straight up stepped up your game when it was being done for real. The guidance office told me that they were super impressed with your overall approach when it came down to working towards the end. The credit ultimately goes to you handling your business when it came down to it.
And for those who scored a 1 or a 2, keep your head up. It's a hard exam that typically sees almost half the students nationally fall short of a 3. Like I said all year, if you look back on your year and you know you gave it your all, that's all anyone can ask for and exam results should not determine whether or not you got something out of the course. For what it's worth, I'm proud of all of you for making it through a tough course, especially for a sophomore (most students nationally take the course as juniors or seniors).
I'll get the breakdown of the class averages on various parts of the test next week. I'll post something if anything jumps out. Have a great rest of the summer and I hope to see you in Euro and/or NHS.
First, a little bit of a breakdown of the scores. In order to respect people's privacy, I'm not going to give a breakdown of how many of each score we had 1-5. I will tell you though that we had nine 5's which ties the record for most 5's since I've been teaching this course. We also had 39% of students score a 4 or 5 which is well beyond the national average. I can also tell you that our average was a 2.913 which is pretty strong given the number of people we had take the exam. And as I mentioned yesterday, this year's exam had the most people score a 3 and above since I've been doing this (and likely in the history of the school).
So why were the scores so much higher than the practice exam? A huge factor likely was the fact that while I created new cut scores based on what the College Board said would happen, I don't think they made the changes on this exam. The second week of summer I attended a 4 day workshop of APUSH teachers and we were told that the essay scores were roughly the same as last year as was the breakdown of 1-5's. So it seems that the real exam used a more student friendly rubric than the one I used. I thought that might be a possibility, but my philosophy in teaching AP has been that if I'm going to error, I'm going to error on the side of being too hard rather than too easy. :)
I also think a lot of you just straight up stepped up your game when it was being done for real. The guidance office told me that they were super impressed with your overall approach when it came down to working towards the end. The credit ultimately goes to you handling your business when it came down to it.
And for those who scored a 1 or a 2, keep your head up. It's a hard exam that typically sees almost half the students nationally fall short of a 3. Like I said all year, if you look back on your year and you know you gave it your all, that's all anyone can ask for and exam results should not determine whether or not you got something out of the course. For what it's worth, I'm proud of all of you for making it through a tough course, especially for a sophomore (most students nationally take the course as juniors or seniors).
I'll get the breakdown of the class averages on various parts of the test next week. I'll post something if anything jumps out. Have a great rest of the summer and I hope to see you in Euro and/or NHS.
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