Greetings,
This communication is in response to concerns regarding Advanced Placement testing for Dearborn Schools.
Earlier this week, the school district was informed that there may have been prohibited behavior during one of our testing sessions. In compliance with the guidelines listed in the Advanced Placement Coordinator’s Manual, the district investigated the incident and reported the rule violation to the College Board, which is the organization that oversees Advanced Placement testing.
The specific violation was the following: “Students may not consult textbooks, notes, teachers, other students, or any other resource (including the prohibited equipment listed above) during the exam or during the break between Sections I and II of the exam, or during any unscheduled breaks.” (AP Coordinator’s Manual, Part 2 p. 21). It was determined that prohibited resources were stored on students’ calculators.
Our goal is to ensure a secure testing environment and want to avoid the potential of having a whole testing session invalidated, which could be the outcome should there be continued violations.
As a result and as recommended by the college board and in order to protect our students from further potential prohibited behaviors, students will need to either clear their calculator memory prior to their exam or use a district-provided calculator that meets the College Board’s standards.
While the College Board’s AP Calculator Policy states that calculators’ memories do not need to be cleared for testing, this does not prevent districts from locally deciding to have the calculator’s memories cleared if they feel that the integrity of the testing environment could be compromised. This does not violate any College Board policy or guidelines, and does not put students at a disadvantage for being successful on the AP exams. This has been confirmed by the College Board. The decision was made to protect the integrity of the AP testing sessions in order to ensure that no student’s exams are invalidated.
We want all of our students to be successful and have equal opportunities for success. While having to clear one’s calculator memory or use the district-provided calculators may cause undue stress, we feel compelled to take this action and trust the resilience of our students to be able to overcome this late change.
We will ask students to clear the memory on their calculators on the AP test where this is applicable. If they do not want to clear the memory on their calculator they may use a district calculator.
Thank you