Cancel all AP test fees this year, including refunds for those already charged.įor what it is worth, the College Board made AP exams shorter and open-note last year to acknowledge the chaos created by the abrupt shift to online learning. Make all tests open-note and ensure that tests cover content found in accessible study materials. Do away with the current digital exam policy of being unable to return to previous questions. The message gained enough support for the College Board itself to comment on our post, claiming that “to support Muslim students, no exams are being administered on May 13,” which doesn’t speak to the fact that Ramadan is a month-long observance.ĭue to this repeated ignorance of marginalized students, we are calling on the College Board to: A student on our Instagram voiced similar frustration with the College Board ignoring the circumstances of Muslim students. The College Board isn’t adequately addressing its contribution to education inequity and is instead exacerbating it by not paying enough attention to student health during this pandemic.Īnother team member, Sabirah Mahmud, as an inner-city high-school senior from Philadelphia, voices concern about her experiences as a Muslim student who consistently has AP testing around Ramadan. “I had to take the AP European History exam while fasting, which inevitably impacted my ability to focus,” she explains. By enforcing strict testing guidelines, the College Board merely furthers the inequities in standardized testing even in a non-COVID world, we continue to see that marginalized students are less likely to accurately receive testing accommodations or have access to expensive test-prep courses. The pandemic has widened economic disparities and magnified existing socioeconomic barriers. Taking this into account, our demands specifically outline the disproportionate effects that remote learning has had on BIPOC students, low-income students, and students in difficult family situations. One of our team members, high-school senior Madeline Halteh, claims that she “experienced the effects of an inequitable online-testing system last year, and wouldn’t wish it upon anybody else.” Halteh brought up the problematic history of standardized testing, and particularly the College Board’s SAT, which was created to measure and enforce ideas about racial superiority. Nonetheless, the College Board hasn’t appeared to account for the impacts that online school has had on students’ health, well-being, and learning. 
It seems redundant to point out that this school year has been anything but regular - our classes, at least, meet much less frequently, and for many, content has been difficult to digest virtually, and Zoom fatigue has been overwhelming. These students are often from low-income communities of color, further perpetuating education and health inequity.Īnother major problem with this year’s exam is that the in-person exam is designed for a regular school year.
Moreover, the College Board’s digital requirements mean that students without proper technology would need to take in-person exams, putting them at higher risk for exposure to COVID-19. My math teacher said she’d heard from other teachers that online classes often meet less than in-person ones, meaning preparation for this test presents many new challenges. I have not seen my school campus since March 2020. For upwards of a year now, millions of students across the country have been in an environment antithetical to our learning.
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