I have held off on writing this reflection for more than a week because I wasn’t sure what to think. I had an intial emotional response that was strong, but that’s not what’s worth writing down; what I need to record for myself are (a) the facts of the case, and (b) the likely explanations.

FACTS

The grades for this year’s Fall Final Exam in my two sections of AP Psychology were noticeably lower than last year’s.

2012:

2013:

Both the multiple-choice grades and the FRQ scores were lower this year, despite the test remaining largely the same. That is to say, the multiple-choice questions were drawn from the same pool of questions released by the College Board as last year’s, and this year’s free-response question was similarly drawn from the College Board’s released exams. (The FRQ, for the record, on this year’s test was Question #2 from the 2013 AP Psychology Exam, while the FRQ for last year’s Fall Final Exam was Question #1 from the 2012 AP Psychology Exam.) For all intents and purposes, our 2012 and 2013 Fall Finals were randomly selected from similar pools of official College Board materials.

2012:

2013:

And yet student scores on the Fall Final were noticeably lower this year, compared to last.

EXPLANATIONS

Though there are too many actual differences between last year and this year to draw any sort of firm conclusion, these are the “significant” differences that come to mind:

• We are using a different textbook this year, Myers’ Psychology for AP, as opposed to last year, Stangor’s Introduction to Psychology.
• I feel that I have done fewer demonstrations this year. As I reflect on the Fall Semester, there have been a few activities[1] that we just didn’t have time for… for some reason.
• We are in our second year of Block scheduling now, and our second year of 1:1 iPads, as opposed to being in our first year for 2012–2013.
• The Social Science Department changed the adminissions criteria for this year’s AP courses; previously, students in my year-long course would have had to have at least a 3.2 GPA, whereas this year’s students could choose to take the class with any GPA.

Of those possible confounding variables, I’m drawn to the last given: the change in enrollment policy. The Myers text, in my opinion, is better in terms of the quality of its discussion of material, but the Stangor text was shorter; it is possible that because Myers is longer, fewer students are actually reading the text. It’s also possible that relying more on direct instruction and using fewer experiential activities has resulted in a more shallow understanding of the course material. Both of these, I think, would have resulted in earlier discovery; students would have been doing more poorly on the regular Chapter tests. Our quiz and chapter test questions are pulled from a test bank that my colleagues and I have built over the past 15-years that I’ve been teaching the course, whereas the questions on the Final Exam are from the College Board. That was true last year too though, so in and of itself I don’t think that would result in the observed differences in Final Exam scores — but the different enrollment policy may have resulted in a class make-up of students less able to decode the more nuanced College Board questions.

If it is the case that this year’s class has students whose cumulative unweighted GPA is lower than a 3.2, it’s possible that their differing academic skills resulted in this year’s lower Final Exam score. I just don’t know.

Nor do I know what to do about this yet…