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I suspect it's more about maintaining a lowest common denominator. AP CS, last time I saw the data, is already mostly limited to wealthy schools, even compared

I suspect it's more about maintaining a lowest common denominator. AP CS, last time I saw the data, is already mostly limited to wealthy schools, even compared to other AP exams. When there were two levels, the upper level was even more skewed. Giving the exam electronically would mean schools would have to provide some kind of minimal computing environment to run the software. I'm sure there are some schools offering the course or at least letting motivated kids take the exam (I went to a better than decent high school, and Physics C was essentially an extracurricular with a standardized test at the end) who only have ancient Dell machines full of malware.

saagarjha 9y ago
I went to a high school that could have easily offered an exam on computers (in fact, that’s where we took our state exams), so obviously my viewpoint is biased. Keeping that in mind, I think the skew towards wealthier schools will not worsen by requiring it to be taken on a computer. I’ve talked to people whose schools did not even offer the exam to students, because since they did not have the resources to provide a proper class, too few people expressed interest for it to be administered.
- smelendez 9y ago
  Yeah, there are plenty of schools that don't even try, which is really a shame. But as far as I know most high schools don't really provide IT setups for particular exams. So I think there would almost certainly be schools where a random math teacher cobbled together machines for the course but just doesn't have the time or training to set them up for AP's testing requirements. It's also not trivial to build testing software to run on machines used for other purposes. AP/The College Board is pretty serious about cheating. So what happens if the test software freezes and the student instinctively hits alt-tab and his IDE is open with his classwork?

saagarjha 9y ago

I went to a high school that could have easily offered an exam on computers (in fact, that’s where we took our state exams), so obviously my viewpoint is biased. Keeping that in mind, I think the skew towards wealthier schools will not worsen by requiring it to be taken on a computer. I’ve talked to people whose schools did not even offer the exam to students, because since they did not have the resources to provide a proper class, too few people expressed interest for it to be administered.

smelendez 9y ago
Yeah, there are plenty of schools that don't even try, which is really a shame. But as far as I know most high schools don't really provide IT setups for particular exams. So I think there would almost certainly be schools where a random math teacher cobbled together machines for the course but just doesn't have the time or training to set them up for AP's testing requirements. It's also not trivial to build testing software to run on machines used for other purposes. AP/The College Board is pretty serious about cheating. So what happens if the test software freezes and the student instinctively hits alt-tab and his IDE is open with his classwork?