More Oregon high schoolers taking AP exams, earning college credit • Oregon Capital Chronicle:
Participation in Advanced Placement exams has grown 70% since 2021 and now exceeds pre-pandemic participation rates, according to a new report from the College Board.
Who cares? We’ve shoveled tons of kids, ready and otherwise, into these classes. Taking a test doesn’t mean passing a test.
The number of AP exams taken in each subject doesn’t fully translate into the number of students participating in an AP class, because students can take exams without enrolling in the class, but most students who take exams do enroll in the AP class, according to the College Board.
So these could be private school or homeschooled kids taking the tests. Participation rate, already an iffy metric, also doesn’t fully correlate with public schools.
Increased participation and test scores indicate more Oregon students are college ready, according to an Oregon Department of Education news release announcing the latest report.
“Increased participation” shows nothing of the kind. That’s a moronic, though hardly unexpected, statement from the Oregon Department of Education. No link in the story of the news release, so hard to judge if any of the above is media spin.
In 2019, roughly 19,500 Oregon students took 32,000 AP exams. In 2025, nearly 22,000 Oregon students took more than 37,000 AP exams.
More students are taking exams. So what?
Of those students who took exams this year, nearly 72% received a 3, 4 or 5 — scores for which many students can receive college credit if and when they choose to enroll. That proportion of college credit-bearing scores is almost 18% higher than it was just a year ago.
So this is where we start to see, possibly, good news. Some 72% got possible college credit scores and that’s almost 18% higher than last year. Unfortunately, we’re not given information on the percentage in 2019—the year we were using as a participation metric—so one wonders if we’re just cherry-picking data. (Also note that Salem-Keizer’s scores were 62% in 2025.)
First, we have to go to the original data and look it up. What we find is that a 72% score is indeed comparatively and remarkably good news versus previous years going back to 2019. What’s confounding, of course, is attempting to square these higher test scores with kids arriving to college needing remedial classes.
“These results show that Oregon students are rising to the occasion when given the opportunity to learn at the highest levels,” Charlene Williams, director of the Oregon Department of Education, said in a statement.
Oh no. I’ve heard from Ms. Williams before, and one’s ready assumption should be the opposite of whatever she says. Forget that the results really show only that some Oregon students might be rising to the occasion. If she’s saying, “Here’s proof” then one is right to be skeptical. And indeed a quick Google search leads me to exactly what I expected: It’s Now Easier to Pass AP Tests:
Changes by the tests’ maker in recent years have shifted scores upward. That has led to hundreds of thousands of additional students getting what’s considered a passing score—3 or above on the 1-to-5 scale—on exams in popular courses including AP U.S. History and AP U.S. Government.
The nonprofit behind the tests, College Board, says it updated the scoring by replacing its panel of experts with a large-scale data analysis to better reflect the skills students learn in the courses. Some skeptical teachers, test-prep companies and college administrators see the recent changes as another form of grade inflation, and a way to boost the organization’s business by making AP courses seem more attractive.
Well, that makes a lot more sense that Oregon students suddenly getting a lot smarter in the face of all evidence to the contrary.
…In California, AP U.S. History teacher Mark Reindl logged on to view his students’ test results this month and found a surprise: 76% of his students passed, many with high marks. In typical previous years, no more than 40% of his students had passed.
“That was an eye opener,” said Reindl, who has taught the course for 25 years.
An eye-opener indeed.