AP Bio's evolution: not what Darwin intended

Yes, I’ll admit it. I was terrified to take AP Biology last year. I was warned that every little biological detail would invade my sleep and plague me with endless nightmares. The textbook was so thick and heavy I should have received P.E. credit for carrying it around. Yet, I was ready for whatever the course had to offer. What I wasn’t ready for were the abrupt changes to the AP Biology curriculum that threw me way off guard, and affected students around the nation.According to College Board, the revised course aims to transition from “traditional content coverage” to “enduring, conceptual understanding of the content” – a fancy way of saying that students should be less dependent on superficial facts scribbled on flashcards, and be able to dig deeper into the material. This meant the addition of a grid-in calculation section, new types of experiment-based questions and a less forgiving grading scale.To me, it all made sense. That way, we’d be more prepared for the analytical nature of college science courses. But, after such drastic changes, I found myself losing focus on biology itself. Rather, I spent night after night learning the nuances of the AP exam.“In college, you have to make the connections yourself. The labs are more inquiry based, rather than oriented around following a recipe. The new changes are definitely for the better, it’s an improved curriculum and an improved test, but the changes were too abrupt,” AP Biology teacher Kate Song said.Students from former years had treasure troves of up-to-date review books, test questions and sample essays that familiarized them with what was to come in May. I was equipped with only a vague idea of what the test was going to be like. According to Song, students and teachers had almost nothing in the way of sample test questions and essay topics. Many were confused over the details of the changes. Obviously, you can’t know for sure what’s going to be on an AP exam, but everyone deserves a ballpark estimate of what the questions will be like – exactly what I didn’t have.Leaving the cafeteria on test day, I was in low spirits. I wasn’t used to the heavy analysis, and I knew my score would suffer because of it. My fingers were crossed that the kind folks over at College Board would create a grading scale that was understanding of the fact that the AP Biology curriculum was flipped on it’s head. Did they change the grading scale? Yes. They did. According to Song, it became even stricter than it had been in years past.“This summer, I attended an AP Summer institute and took a weeklong course with veteran AP Biology teachers." Song said. "[Most of] the teachers were complaining, because the grading standards changed. You now need a 75 percent on the free response and the multiple-choice to score a five. It was never that difficult. None of the teachers were made aware of this. No one knew about this. We assumed the grading criteria remained the same.”According to College Board, the number of fives dropped to 5.4 percent, almost 350 percent lower than last year’s scores. Almost half of all students received a zero on three out of eight free response questions. Students averaged a staggering 36 percent correctness on the grid-ins.“Many questions were complained about. A lot of material on the test was never covered" Song said. "The same students who earned threes and fours totally could have gotten fours and five on previous tests. I was enraged. Those scores were not reflective of our student’s knowledge. The students have to pay for it. You are the ones that have to pay the price for the transitional period.”I took AP Biology to learn about the wonders of life- not so I can pen the number “5” on my college application. But that’s the opposite of what I ended up doing. The stark changes forced me to forget about biology, and focus my attention on a two–and-a-half hour exam. That is what I find regrettable. According to a recent article by the Baltimore Sun, Maryland teachers were often unsure how to teach their students the new AP Biology curriculum. For example, two Maryland high schools, Dulaney High School and Woodland High School, employed vastly different teaching methods, resulting in a mixture of AP results. Students that were taught methods that didn't reflect the new changes suffered, through no fault of their own. While Destiny Miller of Woodlawn High School received a passing grade in AP Biology, she failed the AP exam.