Good Morning Advanced Placement Coordinators, 

Important AP Updates We're getting closer to the Advanced Placement exam windows for 2021. Thank you for all you are doing to ensure an optimal testing environment for your students.   Thanks to Kathleen Koch, Senior Director from the NC AP Partnership, with the following important AP updates: AP exams: Fee Reduction Status deadline New Research Managing Student Digital Exam Readiness Digital Practice

• This Friday, April 30 (11:59 p.m. ET) is the deadline to indicate fee reduction status for eligible students in AP Registration and Ordering if you ordered exams.

• For your invoice to accurately reflect any fee reductions, indicate Reduced in the AP Fee Status column of your student roster in AP Registration and Ordering for each student who qualifies for a fee reduction. See the 2020-21 AP Coordinator's Manual, Part 1 (.pdf/19.9 MB) for details about the AP fee reduction policy.

New Research

This school year has been especially challenging, and some students may feel less confident about taking AP Exams. This year, in particular, all students should know that simply completing an AP course and exam advances them. 

New research findings (.pdf/302 KB) confirm what AP teachers have long known—students benefit from completing their AP course and exam, regardless of their score.

Managing Student Digital Exam Readiness – For those of you who are administering any digital AP Exams   You can access the dashboard from your personalized AP® login page. To view the dashboard for a course, click Digital Exam Readiness below a course card. The dashboard helps you see whether students have taken required steps to prepare for digital exams. For now, you should focus on whether students have installed the 2021 AP digital testing application and completed Digital Practice. Look at the Login field of the dashboard to check students' installation status and look at the Practice field to check students' practice status. 1–3 days before each digital exam, focus on whether students have completed exam setup. This is the most critical readiness step, when the exam is loaded onto their testing computer. If students don't complete exam setup, they won’t be able to test.Working with your school's AP coordinator, follow up with students, as needed, to ensure that all students complete exam setup no later than the day before the exam. On exam day, you can see whether students have completed the required check-in process, started the exam, and have exam responses successfully submit after the exam. The dashboard will update automatically during the exam, and you shouldn’t refresh the page from your browser. The dashboard for a course shows all students enrolled in the course. You can use the Digital Only filter to show only those students scheduled for digital exams. Pay special attention to orange exclamation points. These indicate an active alert, i.e., the student hasn't taken an action, but still has time to do it. Beginning May 18, the Makeup field will indicate if a student requests a makeup digital exam. AP coordinators manage the makeup exam process.

Try Digital Practice

• You can take digital practice if you'd like to become familiar with how the digital testing application works. Click the Take Digital Practice button from the dashboard and follow the directions onscreen.
• You'll be able to access scoring materials that include the multiple-choice answers and free-response scoring guidelines for the questions in digital practice. Students will be able to access the scoring materials on their own after they complete digital practice.

For complete information about the dashboard and digital practice for teachers, see the "Preparing for Digital AP Exams" section in the AP Digital Testing Guide (.pdf/21 MB).

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Thank you for all you do!

Sincerely,

Beth Cross

State Consultant, 

Division of Advanced Learning and Gifted Education