Addressing Bandwagon CollegeBoard Hate in 2020's AP exams

In this video we explore some entitled reddit, twitter, and youtube posts, and for the first time in youtube history, a reaction to another youtuber, ShivVZG.

#APexams #CollegeBoard

[Tomohasen]

I was cool with College Board being a testing monopoly in an overly privatized education system, but having technical problems with a test that was put together in 2 months? That’s what turned me against them. Disgusting.

[jackevans]

Their apology on cnn was pathetic. They made a weak announcement about how some people had “trouble” submitting their work. They make it sound like people had to refresh the browser, not try to click submit for 5 minutes straight. Then the next paragraph they said that most of the people who had problems were using outdated browsers. I haven’t met anyone who used something other than google chrome. Their response basically boils down to “It’s the students’ fault, but if you say it’s our fault then it wasn’t as bad as it seems.”

[fakename]

what about the fact that the exams are just simply too short to actually assess anyone's knowledge properly? A years worth of content comes down to such a small test

[swaterCS_]

As someone who was originally under that herd mentality, I highly appreciate all that you've done to dispel and counter unfair arguments against College Board. You've reminded me once again to cultivate my gratitude and to step back and look at the *whole picture* before making a judgment.

[jordanday]

I honestly am grateful they did stuff online, I applaud them for doing so quickly, but I think people's main problem is with dinosauce because it was created to set students up to fail

[kharerishit]

0:43 Just because they *could've* done worse things, that doesn't exempt them from the atrocious system that they created.

1:30 I'm not going to defend the entirety of that post, but going on with AP tests during a global emergency is a shady decision. The instability of the time just makes it a bad time to take a test because there are more factors that could cause scores to be inaccurate. Not defending cheating, but still.

1:45 You're argument falls apart when you realize that delaying or straight-up cancelling the tests was an option. A complete overhaul within the span of a few months is never going to end well. The executives at college board should've easily seen it coming that this system was not going to be a great system, and should've made time to refine it by delaying the tests.

2:30 Look, when College Board says that you can take the test on your phone, outright recommending it, and then it's found that the test doesn't support HEIC format, a format of images that is found on the latest versions of iPhones as a default, and then turns around and says that the failure rate was less than 1%, there's going to be doubt. Maybe 1% of people weren't able to submit anything at all. But there could be plenty of other people that scrambled to get something into the text box upon realizing that the test didn't support photos and College Board didn't count that as a failed attempt. We can't count on the computer to recognize all of the failures that occurred on the test.

4:09 The point of the statement wasn't to say that colleges would ignore the scores completely, but that they would be devalued due to inflation. Even if the colleges do look at APs, it looks like the actual deviation in scores across multiple students will be smaller, making the AP scores harder for colleges to use when deciding between students, because getting a 5 is going to be much easier, with or without cheating.

5:03 You essentially ignored his argument. He's saying the Covid-19 is a bad time to take tests, and people may not be able to. At the very least, college board should've allowed people to opt out of the test with refunds. Even though College Board has offered the retake in June, that doesn't mend that issue. And yeah, you're probably right that the virus won't be gone by June, which is why College Board should've cancelled or delayed further. And the idea that students would forget content is absurd. Students know how to study, and if anything, more time to study will *help* the concepts stick, not make it worse. Additionally, if it's so easy for students to forget the content, why are they earning credit for things they don't know?

Overall, yes, some of the arguments are bad, but that doesn't lessen the fact that College Board dropped the ball with AP tests this year. And the blown up outrage isn't *just* because of AP tests. That would be like saying the civil war happened *just* because the south didn't like Abraham Lincoln. These AP tests just happened to be the final straw.

[wafabhayani]

hey you know what, you really opened my eyes to both sides here. i was following the herd mentality and now i see where i was just being biased and how i can fix it. thank you and keep up the videos!

[brennawalton]

You brought up some really good points in this video. A lot of the hate on College Board is from people who didn't take the time to learn about the mechanics and format of the actual test they were about to take and then panicked. Also, I agree that CB did a very good job at developing tests for 3 million students in such a short amount of time, and while it's definitely heartbreaking when the system fails and that essay you worked so hard on becomes pointless, they even addressed that by adding the option to email your work in if you're unable to submit it during the test. However, these aren't the reasons I have an issue with CB and the AP tests this year.


First of all, I felt that the tests weren't long enough. Yes, I know that they had to keep them short to prevent cheating, but there could be two 45 minute essays in a row done in the exact same way they're doing the two-question tests and I think that students would still be hard-pressed to find the time to cheat. I know that graders will be evaluating students' test with the current situation in mind, but I still find it hard to believe that one essay written in under 45 minutes is a good test of a student's knowledge of the entire course. If they got a prompt that they knew nothing about, they're kinda screwed.


Second, they didn't test the actual knowledge you learned in the class. Idk if this example applies to everyone, but this was my experience. The first test I took was APUSH (US History). I actually don't have a lot of problems with this test. It wasn't perfect, but I thought it was sufficiently difficult without being too hard. Overall: a good test for what it was. The next I took was the AP Bio test. This is the test I am referring to when I claim that some of the tests don't test your knowledge of the course. The AP Bio test was considerably longer, more complex, and more difficult than anything we'd done in class or any practice tests that CB released. This test featured prompts that reached up to 6 paragraphs long with 3 or more accompanying graphs and figures, as well as up to ten questions per prompt that tested not our knowledge of biology, but our reading comprehension of the prompt. It was ridiculous.


My final problem with the tests is their cost. When all 3 million of us paid our $94 in October, we were paying for a proper, 4-hour test, not some little 45-minute thing. I think it's ridiculous that these tests cost the same. But CB knows we'll pay it anyway because we need their tests if we even want to think about going to a good college. They have a monopoly on education and it isn't fair no matter how you look at it.

[iv]

The issue I find with the dinosauce incident is the fact that Collegeboard was basically falsely encouraging cheating as a form of entrapment. Despite how you morally think of cheating, for Collegeboard to encourage cheating to catch students is just wrong. They can do what they can in their power to discourage cheating, but I think it was a very bad move to try to catch kids out looking to cheat.

[Crispeaks]

I’m just appreciating that they at least made an attempt to make AP Tests possible. I doubt this kind of thing would be easy to do as quickly as they needed to. Nothing’s perfect, especially when it’s the first time around. Was it frustrating? A little bit, but at least they’ll be better prepared for the next batch of students that’ll have to take it next year...if online AP Exams are even still a thing next year.

[MintyOrange]

I'm a little angry at them because a lot of students outside of the U.S had to take their exams as 12 a.m, 2 a.m etc.

[testserver]

All ap tests should be open notes in the future :D

[onyxred]

“When did Coronavirus turn the world into the purge” well this didn’t age well

[eddietime]

Honestly, I enjoyed this years aps test. I mean I get getting mad because u have to retake it and I also get that college board has some questionable practices, but you know, they tried. What else were they supposed to do.

[Neiroe]

You're right, I'm sorry. I've realized the error of my ways. College Board is just fine. There was no possible way this could have been handled better by that organization.
Honestly, we should be thanking these deities for letting us give them money to decide if we're good enough to have a future.

[BobRoss_lover]

personally i am disappointed in college board after i found out they lied about being a non profit. i dont really have any issue with what college board has done since i have changed my views on education. but it really bothers me that they have a monopoly on education and that they dont give a shit. everyone learns differently and standardized testing like this bothers me.

[callumthurston]

At first, I was really against these online exams, but as I took them I appreciated them for what they are. I’m glad that I will still be able to earn college credit when they could have probably gotten away with canceling them and giving a partial refund or something absurd. These tests are obviously made with open note in mind as the time is very strict and the info you are being quizzed on is pretty much impossible to find in time, but if you already know it then you should be able to quickly come up with something. I only really used my notes to define a word or find a term maybe two or three times max during all four of my exams. While I really despise the monopoly that is college board, these online exams are not as corrupt and exploitable as people say, and I am glad that you pointed it out. I was fearful that this collegeboard hate (that in many ways is WELL deserved) is being pitted against these online exams too much and would inadvertently invalidate them to colleges and discard the hard work all of us students put in. Thank you for making this video series to show the inherent failings of the college board while also defending what they have done right as a company! It is really important that situations like this one are seen in a rational and true way as to be handled properly without our prejudices for or against something interfering with proper judgment.

[dansicc]

Your presentation style is absolutely perfect. With the combination of chill music, your satisfying voice, and your humor, I don't think anyone could do it better.

[MrHatoi]

IMO the biggest issue is that they removed the multiple choice section because it completely changed the entire test. So much of the design of AP tests was oriented around the fact that almost every test has both an MC and FRQ section. Without MC, a single mistake can easily mean you fail half the test on most of the math and science based exams. The amount and depth of topics covered is way less as well because there are only 2 questions and even with multiple parts there's absolutely no way that they can cover even close to the entire course content. This means that the exam is almost entirely luck based and you could either luck out and get questions on the topics you're the most comfortable with or get terrible luck and have to answer questions about your worst topics. What exacerbates this even more is the fact that questions are always randomized so everyone doesn't get the same ones. When there's an MC section then it tends to balance out since with so many questions they average out to about the same test, but with only 2 questions everything becomes way more unfair. Suddenly some people get questions about easier topics and some people get questions about harder ones. And these questions are not balanced out at all; I've taken 6 AP tests so far and on several of them I've heard from other people in my class that they got questions on completely different material with widely varying difficulties, especially with Physics C and Calculus. In short it's an issue of sample size: a test made up of 2 FRQs is nowhere near a large enough sample size to accurately determine whether a student knows all of the material. I don't really see any good reason for them removing the multiple choice section either. They already have a system for taking multiple choice tests that they use for AP Classroom, so it's not like it's a huge additional burden for them to code. Worst case scenario, they could have just used the exact same submissions process as the FRQs and told people to write down the letter they chose for each number on an answer sheet. Cheating and using open notes aren't much more of an advantage on MC questions compared to FRQs, since the extremely short time constraint still applies, and MCQs are typically designed not to be recall-based questions anyway. If anything it would have made far more sense to _only_ do the MC section and drop the FRQs instead. Seriously, why did they get rid of the multiple choice section?

[curtispatton]

The main problem that no one seems to mention is that they reduce the time to the point of making it near impossible for some people who may have trouble with the standardized testing formula