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Settling Scores: Experts Debate Why AP Performance Has Soared

Since the College Board began changing its grading criteria for Advanced Placement exams, scores have climbed rapidly.

By Kevin Mahnken | July 27, 2026

Eamonn Fitzmaurice/The 74

By Kevin Mahnken<br>July 27, 2026

A few years ago, education experts noticed that scores were climbing upwards on a number of Advanced Placement tests. The increases, measured on some of the program’s most popular assessments, were as significant as they were unexpected.

In AP Chemistry, the share of students scoring a 3, 4 or 5 (generally interpreted as a passing grade on the famously challenging exams, which are scored on a 1-5 scale) increased from 54% in 2022 to 75.1% in 2023. In AP United States Government and Politics, that proportion grew even more, from 49.2% to 73% from year to year. By one estimate, roughly 100,000 more students hit the passing threshold on AP U.S. History in 2024 than in 2023.

The change came after a 2022 move by the College Board — the nonprofit education organization that owns and administers both AP and the SAT — to adopt a new scoring methodology intended to tamp down volatility in results. The organization’s leadership said the new procedures brought their standards into better alignment with those of universities themselves, making the AP a more reliable indicator of students’ readiness for college-level work. Since scores of 3 or above are generally accepted for college credit, there needs to be a close equivalency between high ratings on the 42 AP subject tests and what is expected by postsecondary institutions.

Yet some critics say the surge in higher marks shows that the tests have simply been made easier to pass. The most prominent, Harvard political scientist Paul Peterson, pointedly accused the College Board of “dumbing down” its hallmark products in a recent series of essays published by the journal Education Next.

Peterson said the shift might be seen as a reflection of grade inflation at the college level, adding that, after a long period during which that trend has accelerated, it could be seen as “appropriate” for a test taker to now earn a 4 with a performance that previously would have merited a 3.

On the other hand, he faulted the College Board for stirring confusion over what American students actually know — and for not being more forthcoming about changes in their methods.

The AP tests are defying what every other test is telling us.<br>Tom Loveless, education researcher

“The College Board wants to say, ‘We haven’t changed our standards, and we’re the one reliable benchmark out there that everyone should pay attention to,’ ” Peterson told The 74. “But at the same time, they’ve modified the way they score the material.”

Trevor Packer, the College Board’s senior vice president for AP and instruction, rejected that characterization. Passing rates have risen precipitously because the old grading process, reliant on small panels of college instructors, dramatically understated high schoolers’ actual readiness for college, he said.

Prior panels had established artificially stringent standards that produced pass rates well below the historical AP standard.<br>Trevor Packer, College Board

For a number of tests, Packer wrote in an email, “prior panels had established artificially stringent standards that produced pass rates well below the historical AP standard.”

Much could depend on whether states and colleges accept that explanation. Dozens of states subsidize the cost for at least some students to sit for the exams, and about the same number mandate that their public university systems award credit for passing scores. What’s more, governors and local education leaders have touted high AP scores and participation rates as evidence of school quality in their states.

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Tom Loveless, a veteran K–12 researcher who formerly headed the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, said the upsurge in AP grading is particularly incongruous with the results of virtually all other standardized testing from the last half-decade, which have shown significant drops in academic achievement coinciding with the emergence of COVID-19 and subsequent closure of schools to in-person learning.

“They started this [change in scoring] during the pandemic, and no one in their right mind thinks the scores went up during the pandemic,” Loveless said. “Yet the AP tests are...