AP Scores Are In, Now What?

After waiting two months, AP Scores were released to students and teachers at the start of July. It can be an exciting time for those who have high scores and troubling for those with students who didn't perform as expected. Inevitably, this is a time when teachers will analyze there score and start to think about how they can better prepare their students next year. In this post, I want to share a few things to keep in mind.

Are you super happy with your students' performance? Something to consider that you might not want to hear:

Did your students get all 5s? Or all 3s, 4s, and 5s? That sounds marvelous. But I would like to suggest that maybe, you are not serving enough students. Research has shown time and time again that students benefit from taking an AP class, regardless of their ability to earn college credit. And year over year, my students that earned a 1 or 2 were the ones that I was so excited to hear from as they went off to college, were top of their CS 1 course, and thriving. It was the exposure in my classroom that gave them the confidence and experience to succeed in college. If you have all passing students, I challenge you to consider:

• are truly reaching all the students that are capable of taking a computer science course?
• do you have pre-requisite programming courses? Are they creating a barrier to your class? My diversity problems were largely solved when I dropped pre-requisite programming courses. Many of my female students were unwilling to take non-AP courses in order to take an AP class. Once I adopted more of an open-door policy, more female students took advantage of AP Computer Science A.

Are you disappointed with your students' performance and think its you? Here's some things that might help:

Are you new to teaching AP Computer Science, coming from a non-CS background, hang in their my friend. You are not alone in this journey. Many of your CS colleagues, including myself, come from other fields of study. I have a math background, for instance. I had to largely self-study and learn the CS content I was teaching as well as the pedagogical strategies of a CS teachers, which are not entirely the same as a math teacher. Classroom management when dealing with computing devices and largely project based learning present unique challenges. A few things that might help:

1. Relax, it's ok if your classroom looks like chaos and is loud. As long as students are on track, they are learning. But it is going to be busy.
2. Have a good mix of a little lecture and practice hands-on. They need to experience what the program code is doing, not just have a static experience.
3. Let them work in pairs. You are one person and can't help everyone with their programs. Allowing them to work with a partner helps them get support without it always coming from you.
4. Let go of any "Sage on the Stage" mentality. You don't have to know all the answers. You are going to have students that are more knowledgeable, that's ok, learn from them. You are also going to have students solve things in ways that you haven't thought of before. That's fine too. Learn from those students as well. Create a classroom culture of exploring, trying and failing, and learning.
5. Finally, I think it takes 3 - 5 years to get into your groove. Stick with it. It's worth it and you will get better at it.

Remember that you can do everything right, but students still need to put in the work. You can't study for them, care about the exam for them, or take the exam for them. They have to put in the work. This might be a good lesson for them about how much more effort they need to put in. You can't own this for them. They should feel the loss. Not you.

Are you using a provider? Consider whether your students are engaged with that provider or not. Do you understand the providers materials enough to differentiate lessons that your students aren't grasping? Provider materials are great, but they aren't a "one size fits all" solution. Some lessons are going to be great and others won't work for your students and fall flat. Do you need a different provider? Is there a provider community you can involve yourself in to get suggestions when lessons don't go well? Do you need to mix and match provider materials to ensure that you are delivering instruction that is best for your unique set of students?

What about next school year?

Now it's time to think about next year. You have access to an instructional planning report from AP. This report will compare your students' performance against those of your state and nationally. It will be broken down by multiple choice and free response. It will also provide information on skills that are being assessed. Take time to look at your report and identify 2 - 3 areas where you are going to work to make changes.

• Did your students score better on MCQ or FRQ?
• Are there units or FRQs that your students did better on?
• Which units or FRQs do you need to spend more time on?
• Are there skills that you need to spend more time on?

Taking a few minutes to recognize what is going well and a couple areas that you want to work on improving gives you concrete goals for the next school year. Afterall, the exam is over and all you can control is what happens in the next school year.

Lastly, I had an AP Administrator that I always asked us to compare the grades students earned in class verses the grades they scored on the AP exam. There should be some correlation here. If you are seeing that all the students got A's in your classroom, but 1's on the exam, you may need to do something with your grading. If you have a student who did great in your class but not on the AP exam, why is this? And consider the other way around too. All in all, if their class grades mirror their exam grades, you are probably on the right track.

Remember, your students have a giant leg up just by having the challenge of taking this course.

Here's to a fantastic school year!