Changes to AP US Sit Well at BHS, Despite National Controversy

On By Branford Buzz
By Madeleine Mattson and Rebecca Criscuolo The Advanced Placement United States history curriculum has changed this school year, affecting not only Branford High School students, but students and teachers across America. If the students who took AP US last school year were to walk into an AP US history classroom this year, they would not recognize it. Teachers at Branford aren’t complaining about the new curriculum but some students are.  In Golden, Colorado hundreds of students took part in massive walkouts outside of the school over this new change. “The protests were a backlash against conservative efforts both locally and nationally to undo changes to the AP History curriculum, which were released in 2012 by the College Board, the New Jersey-based nonprofit that administers Advanced Placement tests,” according to Bloomberg Businessweek. “This class is setting you up for life… so that’s pretty cool.” said Branford High School AP US teacher Mr. Hinrichs. There are many serious questions about the new AP US history exam that is taken place in the spring because it may conflict with existing history standards in a number of states. Texas is at the lead of the resistance to the new APUS History exam. A member of the Texas School Board is trying to introduce an answer to the criticism and rejection of the new AP US history exam. As far as changes other than content go, BHS teacher Joel Hinrichs said that courses in the past were geared towards memorization, but this year it’s about emphasizing critical historical thinking. The amount of material to learn and study will be the same but only about half of it will be used on a test, mostly for putting a given document in context, he said. The tests and shorter and the workload is less, but there is more thinking involved. The grading has changed in terms of rubrics and scales. Some of the changes are as follows:
  • Document based questions used to have eleven documents whereas now they have seven.
  • Long essay questions are graded on a 0-6 scale and short essay questions are being graded on a 0-9 scale.
  • The amount of time given on short answer questions has been shortened but there’s been extended amount of time on the multiple choice.
  Many a student who took the course last year has complained that the change in curriculum has made the class easier. According to Hinrichs, “It’s less work. It’s not easier. It’s harder to analyze who someone was then recognize their name.”