Advances in AP: Course and Exam Redesign

As part of its commitment to continually enhance alignment with current practices in college instruction, AP evaluates its courses and exams regularly and revises them to deepen the focus on critical thinking skills and to reflect the most recent developments in each discipline.

Response from the academic community to the AP course and exam redesign has been overwhelmingly positive. Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of Science magazine and former president of the National Academy of Sciences, has called the science redesign “a major reform in science education that will enable many more young Americans to experience science as a special ‘way of knowing’ about the world.”

Brian G. Kennelly, professor in the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at California Polytechnic State University, served as the co-chair of the committee that worked on the AP French Language and Culture course and exam redesign. “With the redesign of the course and exam, we have … confirmed the relevance of French within a global and interdisciplinary framework, and convincingly demonstrated how it helps students and faculty reach a more nuanced view of the world in which we live and interact.”