By Brenna Gormally ’11, Commentary Editor

Many of us students in the Upper School have experienced the stress that sets in during the hectic end-of-year rush right before Advanced Placement exams start in May. Year after year we wonder why we subject ourselves to such torture. Regardless of the motivations, each May, well over one hundred of Newark Academy students, mostly upperclassmen, line up to register for another round of stress.

However, now there is something for which to be thankful.  Starting in 2012, new AP exams, with less information, will be administered.  By 2015, twelve of the thirty AP courses will have new exam formats, in subjects that have been taken by NA students in the past: French, Spanish Literature, Latin, German, U.S. History, European History, World History, Art History, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. This is a much-needed change. In recent years, the amount of information expected to be remembered and understood for exams has sky-rocketed, and students must continually learn more current facts, especially in such subjects such as U.S. History.  NA Biology teacher Mrs. Palmer believes that “placing a greater emphasis on big concepts and moving away from minute details […] is a great idea.”  She affirms that the new program “will allow students and teachers a little breathing room to explore concepts, debate hot topics, and engage in more challenging lab experiments.”

For most subjects, like foreign languages, in which exams have essentially become an SAT Reasoning test (save the math part) in that language, these changes should come as a great boon to students nationwide. Students will be able to more thoroughly prepare for an exam that requires the recall of less knowledge.  Mr. Stourton, IB Coordinator at NA, speculated that “perhaps AP is waking up to the growth of IB in the US, and trying to play catch-up.”

However, such changes also threaten to bring about less visible, negative consequences. Newark Academy Senior Tara Gadde is a current IB Biology student, and the class follows a curriculum that is more broad, but less in-depth than that of AP Biology. She believes that not all of the College Board AP changes will be beneficial. “With other countries rising as technological superpowers, we really can’t afford to lower the bar in terms of the sciences,” she says.

Gadde brings up a good point.  In a 2009 study completed by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development called PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), the US fell behind twenty-two other countries on the science scale.  The purpose and existence of AP courses is to provide challenging, advanced courses to those students who have previously excelled in the standard classes. If exams in such sciences as biology, chemistry, and physics are made less challenging, the U.S. will continue to fall further and further behind educationally-developing countries, especially those of Asia.  By eliminating information on biology exams, for example, and by thus making the exam simpler, College Board is only making it easier for the United States to fall behind other quickly advancing countries.

Rather than changing all the exams, College Board should instead create tests that students would be required to pass before enrolling in such challenging AP courses as biology.  By ensuring that only the most qualified students are in these higher-level classes, the exams would be more appropriately-geared towards the test-takers.  The College Board must ensure that the Advanced Placement program remains challenging in order to help the U.S. regain its foothold on the sciences on a global level.