By Amanda Tennant, staff writer
This AP testing season will be different than years prior. Instead of being held at other locations, AP testing will be held at a student’s home school. While the district thinks having a home advantage will bring comfort to AP students, actual AP students, such as myself, beg to differ.
These changes, as noble as they seem, do nothing except belittle students. Relocating the test to a different building or a different environment does not mean us AP students cannot succeed. A lot of AP students are very capable. The majority of us can drive, arrange plans for a ride, or at the very least, navigate around the city that we live in. After all, we are not elementary students, but instead grown high school students taking a college level test for college credit.
Also, it is not necessarily beneficial to hold testing at school. In order to create a standardized testing environment, the schools will have to turn off all the bells and attempt to eliminate all sound for two weeks. This format is incredibly inconvenient for everyone. It is inconvenient for the other students and teachers in the building trying to go about their normal day without a bell.
It also puts the AP students in a bad situation because there is no guarantee for complete silence. In AP testing rooms, there needs to be complete and utter silence. If even a cell phone goes off, everyone’s test could be nullified. So, how is a silent testing environment supposed to be presented in a high school with 2,000 plus students? There is always going to be that one kid that screams and blasts music down the hallway and causes a disruption for everyone else. Also, what happens if the bell rings? Or announcements are turned on? It is not fair to the students, teachers, or parents if a mistake happens and a bell goes off causing the test to be canceled.
At least if testers are relocated to a separate facility, other students and teachers will able to go about their normal day and AP students will be offered a silent testing environment since they will be the only people present.
Also, by having it at school, it will be harder for students to go home and get the much deserved rest that they need. It is no secret that AP tests are exhausting
Illustration by Anna Matson physically, mentally, and emotionally. Because of this, after AP tests students will go home, crawl into bed, and sleep only to wake up a couple of hours later to continue studying for the next AP exam. By having it at school, students are expected to go back to class and continue to exert themselves mentally. Yes, students can still go home if their parent’s call them in. However, it will be a bigger hassle because students will have to go through the main office and ask to be excused, that is if the office will even let the students go home.
Though AP testing at the schools are set in stone this year, next year school officials should have testing students go back to the previous testing sites for the sake of everyone in this testing process.