Advanced Placement Information

Dear Parents and Students,

To stay strongly aligned with college credit policies and to prepare AP students for college and subsequent careers, the AP Program has recently redesigned several courses in history, world languages, and science. This week we will take a look at the upcoming changes being put in place for AP United States History.

Revisions at a Glance

• A new curriculum framework clarifies the knowledge and skills students should demonstrate to qualify for college credit and placement.
  In the past, the AP Program simply specified the weighting of various periods that the AP course should cover. Although this approach was intended to provide flexibility, the lack of specificity put pressure on many teachers, who were uncertain about AP Exam content, to attempt to cover every detail of American history. As a result, many felt unable to dedicate sufficient class time to helping students apply content knowledge to the practice of historical analysis, interpretation, and writing.
• The new AP U.S. History Curriculum Framework, developed in close consultation with college and university faculty and master AP teachers nationwide, contains a series of learning objectives that clearly describe the knowledge and skills students should demonstrate to succeed on the AP Exam and to qualify for college credit and placement. Timing tests have shown that educators can teach these learning objectives effectively in 140 class periods, so teachers gain the much-needed time to help students develop and apply rich content knowledge and essential thinking skills.
  College U.S. history survey courses have increased emphasis on early and recent American history and decreased emphasis in other areas. This rebalanced focus is reflected in the content weighting of the new AP U.S. History program, reducing the time spent on the 19th century to increase the focus on early and recent American history.
• AP teachers have the flexibility college professors enjoy, to emphasize specific historical examples, and de-emphasize others.
  AP teachers have frequently felt pressure to cover a large amount of content, uncertain of which historical facts, figures, and events would appear on the AP U.S. History Exam. The newly revised exams will relieve pressure and free teachers to engage students more deeply in exploring, understanding, and interpreting major historical events. The new AP Exam offers —
  • Clarity: Each exam questions is derived from the course’s stated learning objectives
  • Flexibility: Teachers choose specific topics to explore in greater or lesser depth. Exam questions are written in a way that allows students to focus their responses on the historical examples taught in class.
• Historical thinking skills are emphasized.
  Each new AP U.S. History learning objective now focuses on content and skills, promoting the historical thinking skills (chronological reasoning, comparing and contextualizing, crafting historical arguments using historical evidence, and interpreting and synthesizing historical narrative) valued by colleges and universities as central to studying history.
• College history faculty members and department chairs have approved and lauded the redesigned course. Each element of the redesigned course and exam was reviewed by college department chairs and faculty members across the United States. They identified the key concepts that history students must learn, and confirmed that within those parameters, AP teachers should have the same flexibility as college professors have to select specific historical topics, examples, and primary sources to teach.