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The organization behind the Advanced Placement exams recently defended itself amid questions about grade inflation, a wider issue of concern spanning from high schools to the Ivy League.
For high school students, passing these exams typically means earning college credit, oftentimes reducing the amount of general education courses they are required to take to earn a bachelor’s degree. But a growing number of reports from professors about students struggling to perform basic mathematics or read a whole book have raised questions about where the problems originated and what can be done.
Official scores from the College Board, a nonprofit that runs the AP exams, show a sharp increase in passing scores in a number of subjects in the years after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The subject of United States History, for example, showed a percentage of passing students jump from approximately 48% in 2023 to 72% in 2024 and the mean score increased from 2.54 to 3.23, respectively.
These trends are seen in other subjects, including but not limited to English Literature and Composition, English Language and Composition, Chemistry and Physics I with pass rates remaining high through the most recent 2026 test cycle.
“For each AP subject, we routinely ask hundreds of college instructors what they teach in their intro-level classes and what students should know by the end. Similarly, we write AP exams and set scoring to mirror colleges’ expectations and challenge high school students,” the College Board told The College Fix in a statement recently when asked about grade inflation concerns.
“AP provides a common yardstick that transcends the standards and grading of any particular teacher, class, high school, or college. Our goal is to design engaging high school courses that demand college-level thought, effort, and skills from students anywhere,” the group said in a statement through its media relations office.
“The intersection where students feel challenged and colleges can see a student’s promise shifts from time to time, from subject to subject, but it’s where College Board has always calibrated the AP program. We’re continuously considering our methods, sharing what we observe, and seeking to improve,” according to the statement provided to The Fix.
However, professors and education policy experts recently have raised concerns about the AP tests becoming less rigorous, leading to more students earing college credits despite being less knowledgeable about the topic, according to a recent article from the education news site The 74.
Among them is Marc Porter Magee, founder of 50CAN, an education advocacy organization. He recently posted about the issue on X, writing that if College Board judges its testing based on “how AP scores match up to college grades, and college grades are experiencing inflation, then AP scores will also get inflated.”
The grade increases are linked to the College Board making changes in its scoring methodology beginning in 2022 to “tamp down volatility in results,” The 74 article states.
According to a 2024 announcement from the testing group, the change involved using “evidence-based standard setting … to determine appropriate score standards for students in a range of AP courses.”
This involves “collect[ing] input from hundreds of experts and assembl[ing] fine-grained student performance data for analysis, enabling us to verify and set AP score standards with more robust data than ever before.”
The 2024 announcement also acknowledged the methodology change resulted in a larger percentage of students receiving higher grades in some exams.
Despite the College Board’s explanation of the changes, concerns remain.
Catrin Wigfall, education policy fellow at Center of the American Experiment, described a “huge disconnect” between graduation rates and proficiency in a recent phone interview with The Fix. However, she said the issue is seen in K-12 education as a whole, not just in standardized test scores like the AP exams.
In an article published earlier this year, Wigfall mentioned problems with grade inflation in the AP exams and offered reforms for colleges and universities to regain an understanding of where students really are when they enter the institution.
Speaking with The Fix, she highlighting the long-term effects of grade inflation on lifetime earnings and workforce readiness.
“At some point a test that almost everyone passes is no longer a meaningful signal of achievement,” she told The Fix.
To reform these flaws in the education system, she pointed to the success of the previously-used high school exit exam, arguing it should be reinstated in schools nationwide.
There are currently only six states that require this assessment for students to graduate, but Wigfall noted its strong record of determining proficiency.
“If grades are to serve their intended purpose,whether that’s on a report card or on an AP exam, they need to mean something again and they need to reflect what students actually know,” she said.
“We need to get rid of any subjective or politically-driven grading practices and return to objective standards and have greater consistency being grades and actual achievement,” Wigfall told The Fix.
MORE: ‘Inflation-adjusted’ GPAs could reform grade inflation problems, policy report argues
