Over the past few years, national scores on several Advance Placement tests—which millions of high school students take to demonstrate aptitude in certain subjects—have risen dramatically. On the English Literature and Composition, U.S. History, and Chemistry tests, for instance, more than 70 percent of students now earn passing scores. Just a few years ago, pass rates of around 40 percent to 50 percent were more typical for these tests.
Such unusual spikes have led some to accuse the College Board, the nonprofit organization that administers the AP program, of artificially inflating passing scores. But the College Board maintains that the newer scoring system is merely a correction to the older version that underestimated how many students were performing at the college level.
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With little public information about how the new methodology produces these results, the debate has proved difficult to parse. So I reached out to the College Board for answers. Their replies left me with more questions than answers—and it’s still unclear what caused the sudden jump.
The sudden rise in AP scores warrants attention. Currently, 37 states require public universities to award credit to students who score a “3” or higher on an AP exam. If the scores are now artificially inflated, students who are not proficient in a subject may be encouraged to take upper-level courses for which they are not fully ready. Inflation would weaken the academic signaling value of AP exams, too. Maintaining AP standards can also serve as an important check on grade inflation within high schools and colleges.
If the College Board has answers to these concerns, I couldn’t get them. In my outreach, the organization sidestepped key questions about the changes to its scoring methodology. And often when it provided information in response to one question, the answer introduced more inconsistencies and unresolved tensions.
Some background: in 2022, the College Board began changing its scoring methodology for nine subject exams. Prior to the change, the board typically reevaluated its scoring methodology every five to ten years at the direction of a small panel of experts per subject. But the board said that this method sometimes led to volatility in passing rates from one year to another. So, it switched to a system called Evidence-Based Standard Setting (EBSS). Under EBSS, the College Board relies on feedback from hundreds of college professors and more granular student data.
Prior to the implementation of EBSS, all the affected exams had passing rates below 60 percent, according to the College Board. After implementing EBSS, all of these exams had passing rates between 60 percent and 80 percent, which the board calls a “success rate historically achieved in most other AP subjects.”
What’s confusing is how the College Board tries to explain these changes. The board told me by email that EBSS returned passing rates back to “historical” levels, which it defines as “what was typical in the early 21st century and beyond.” For example, under the new scoring methodology, more than 70 percent of students met AP English Literature standards, “restoring standards back to its 70 percent historical rates.” Yet the average passing rate between 2002 and 2019 was 58 percent, according to the board’s own data. Conducting similar analyses for Chemistry and U.S. History, historical rates for the same time period were 56 percent and 53 percent, respectively. Yet after EBSS was implemented, the averages jumped to 76 percent and 73 percent for the respective exams.
In other words, rather than restoring passing rates to their recent historical norms, EBSS appears to have pushed several major exams well above them.
Another claim the College Board makes to justify the EBSS changes is that there was volatility in AP scores from year to year during the standard-setting years. It points to individual examples of large swings, such as AP Biology, under the older system (though the swing occurred after a 2013 redesign of AP Biology). But the nine tests targeted under EBSS were relatively stable prior to the pandemic.
Yet another tension involves the College Board’s justification for a 60–80 percent passing rate. The board told me that it doesn’t predetermine pass rates and that the 60–80 percent range played “no role” in designing its EBSS methodology. Yet when defending the higher passing rates, the College Board points to the academic strength of AP test takers and to surveys showing that college professors believe such students should pass at rates of roughly 60 percent to 80 percent. Other reporting has also described these changes as bringing “all exams to between a 60 and 80 percent success rate.” If this is all a coincidence, it’s a remarkable one.
The board told me that EBSS is not tied to college grades. Rather, it solicits the opinions of college faculty to determine the knowledge that AP test takers must demonstrate. It is possible that such faculty judgment has been skewed by lenient grading culture on campus. But when I asked whether the EBSS included safeguards against professors who embraced “alternative grading“ practices, the College Board did not directly answer my question. EBSS’s methodology may not be directly influenced by college grades. But that doesn’t mean that EBSS has fool-proofed its methodology against lenient, subjective beliefs about grading.
My experience doesn’t seem unusual. The University of California still had “ongoing questions and concerns about the [College Board’s] scoring methodology” even after a year-long inquiry that included meetings, hours-long consultations, and a list of 26 detailed questions.
This lack of transparency limited my ability to get concrete answers. As of now, the College Board is expecting colleges, policymakers, and the public simply to trust that its new scoring system is valid without providing enough information to assess it independently. Which raises the central question: Are the higher scores a more accurate measure of college-level performance, as the College Board contends, or has its new methodology watered down assessment?
That possibility has been a rich topic of speculation. Some observers suspect the College Board is attempting to make the AP exams more desirable. Higher passing rates could encourage more students to participate. And because some states subsidize AP exams, higher pass rates could be an attempt to show state governments that their funding is paying off.
Financial pressures may also play a role. The College Board’s revenue fell from $403.6 million in 2019 to $289.2 million in 2022, according to the New York Times. At the time, many colleges had stopped requiring standardized tests in admissions.
The College Board’s equity goals could also be a factor. The board has sought to diversify AP participation, recommending measures such as targeted assistance for schools enrolling underserved populations and expanding access for students who have not previously taken advanced coursework. Between 2015 and 2025, participation among traditionally underrepresented and low-income students increased by more than half. The new test might help more of these students secure a passing grade.
The College Board has characterized skeptics of the recent scoring changes as “dismiss[ing] the work of millions of students.” But the organization is not doing much to offer clarity to the public. If the College Board is going to make a major change and expect others to have confidence in it, it needs to be more transparent and forthcoming about the process; otherwise, doubts will persist about whether the higher scores reflect stronger student performance or simply a lower bar.