AP Exam and Course Restructuring

I feel like CollegeBoard should restructure how AP courses are taught, specifically in the way that some classes are done within a semester. For example, AP US Gov, AP Physics C (both), and AP Econ (both) are semester courses. Or at least they’re usually taught that way in high schools. It would be more helpful if students had the option take these exams in December, instead of either one of two things happening. 1) These courses are stretched over a year and give students way more time to learn for these courses. This potential causes students to face difficulties in rigor between a one semester class taught over an academic year and a one semester class taught in a semester. Or 2) These courses ARE taught in a semester, but the next semester they are taught a different course, thus they may forget the course content over time or have to study on their own. This is usually the case in AP Government and AP Econ classes, where one class is taught one semester and the next one the next.

To solve this, I propose a solution. AP exams can be offered in the first two full weeks of December, in the same format as May. This also opens up the possibility of properly splitting AP Calc AB and AP Calc BC into AP Calc I and AP Calc II, solving another issue where AP Calc BC covers two semesters worth of content into one exam. Most other AP classes are taken as general education classes, such as AP Lang, APUSH, AP Psych, and so on, thus these classes can stick to the one semester into one year format.

But other courses, such as AP Biology and AP Chemistry also combine two semesters of content into one exam. This could be why students struggle with such low pass rates on these exams. Especially with chemistry being notoriously more difficult. It is more difficult for students to study for essential two classes into one exam.

In the case of AP Biology, most universities only offer equivalency of one semester of biology instead of two. So it’s stressful, yet not worth it to study for two courses, to only get one course worth. So it’s best for the CollegeBoard to separate these classes and offer December exams or to only cover one semesters worth of content for the exam.

So, having AP exams in December can solve these problems pretty well. What do you guys think?