“Advanced Placement (AP) exam pass rates have risen nationwide, following changes to scoring standards implemented by the College Board,” notes Campus Reform. The tests have become less rigorous, but easier passage of the exams has increased reliance on them in the college admissions process.
The College Board claims it is using an “evidence-based standard setting” model, that replaces traditional faculty panels with supposedly “data-driven” scoring methods.
In practice, this has made the tests much easier to pass, even by students who would have flunked them a generation ago. AP score distribution data from last year shows that the percentage of students earning a score of 3 or higher—typically considered passing by colleges—has steadily increased to 20 percent in recent years. (Back in the 1980s and 1990s, colleges more often required a score of 4 or better for passage).
Supporters say the changes improve “fairness” and link AP scoring more closely to college course outcomes, reducing what some critics perceived as subjective grading.
Given how easy it has become to pass college courses these days, students who pass the easier AP exams may indeed be able to pass college courses in the same subject matter. Many college students these days can’t even read assigned texts. American IQs are falling as the educational system fails to teach skills or stimulate minds. Nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates learned almost nothing in their first two years in college, according to a 2011 study. Thirty-six percent learned little even by graduation.
So the College Board may be right that making the AP tests easier aligns AP scoring more closely with college course outcomes.
But as Campus Reform notes, critics still object to the College Board catering to grade inflation by lowering standards:
Others disagree [with the College Board]. Paul E. Peterson, director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University wrote in Education Next that the trend reflects “passing inflation,” arguing that the exams may be becoming less rigorous. He suggested that higher pass rates benefit the College Board financially by encouraging more students to take AP courses and exams.
In 2025, more than 1.3 million students took over 4.8 million AP exams. With each exam costing $98, the organization generates significant revenue….The College Board produces substantial annual surpluses despite its nonprofit status, hitting $2 billion in revenue in 2024.
Michael Torres of the James G. Martin Center noted that many college-bound students feel pressure to take multiple AP exams. “Almost every college-bound student in America is both pushed and incentivized to take as many AP exams as possible,” Torres wrote.
Concerns extend beyond scoring. A report from the Goldwater Institute argues that some AP course frameworks promote “politically left-leaning views,” citing examples from AP Psychology and AP African American Studies materials published by the College Board.
At the same time, participation and pass rates continue to rise at the state level. The Los Angeles Times reported that students in the Los Angeles Unified School District have increased AP pass rates by approximately 15 percent.
This is so even though graduates of that school district often have difficulty passing even remedial college classes. At the University of California San Diego, the number of freshmen requiring remedial math has increased from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 8, leading the university to create new classes addressing elementary and middle-school level math, such as basic addition. Many of these students who failed to learn basic grade school math came from the Los Angeles Unified School District. (Admittedly, the pool of applicants who take AP tests are not mostly the same as the pool of applicants who need remedial math).
College Board officials defend the changes. Trevor Packer, senior vice president of the AP program, told the American Enterprise Institute that the College Board’s new system moves away from “subjective judgments” and is based on “rapid data collection and analysis.”
Critics such as Marco Learning founder John Moscatiello have questioned the reliability and evidentiary basis for that claim by the College Board, citing a lack of public access to the data underlying that claim.
