Just out of curiosity...how much does your school charge for AP exams? For some reason...as a private school...we charge our students $150...which is well above the $89 price per exam on the Collegeboard Website.
Also, I need some advice regarding something I feel that is not quite right. Some of my AP World students will not be taking the test for a variety of reasons....all of them have busted their butt all year. Yet, the administration is telling them that if they do not take the AP world test they will not have "AP World" on their transcript...rather...it will just reflect college prep world.....can a school do this????
I have no experience from teaching AP but when I took AP classes in high school the exams cost $80 each. If you did not take the exam, you would not get AP credit on your transcript. You didn't have to pass the test, you just had to take it.
It is free. AP courses are seen as a normal part of the courses offered and therefore part of the free public education. It was determined that it isn't fair to charge families over a certain income and not charge other families. It was also determined that the fee could become a deterrent for some kids taking an AP course since students are required to take the test if they take the course.
For students wanting to take the tests without taking the corresponding course, they do this independently and do pay.
When I was in HS, we had to pay around $40 I think. The school subsidized more than half the cost of each test. In addition, students in National Honor Society had the full cost paid by the school, so I paid $0 for all of the tests I took my senior year.
If we didn't take the test, we didn't get the AP designation on our transcript.
We charge $89 at a public school. Our kids are required to take the AP test. However, next year they will not be required so I'm not sure what that will do to the credit, if anything.
Ours used to be free, but with budget cuts, students had to start paying the $89 fee although some do get subsidies. They are not required to take the test anymore, but still get the credit. I found, as did most of my colleagues, that when they realized they could get the credit without teh test, many of them got a little lazy. They still did work, (they're AP kids), but they were much more satisfied with lower grades in general and in March, when the class almost exclusively becomes test prep, they tune out, and don't bother, because they know they're not taking the class. They do the work, but they don't try. My scores went down exponentially when tests were no longer paid for by the school.
