In his recent Education Next article, Paul Peterson claims that Advanced Placement (AP) Exams are being “dumbed down.” He even goes so far as to state that College Board has “admitted” the exam questions are now easier in response to less demanding curricula in high schools and colleges.

This is entirely false.

AP Exam questions are not easier than in the past, nor are they harder. The exams themselves have not changed. Well-established equating processes ensure the difficulty of AP Exams remains consistent from year to year.

So why have AP scores increased in some subjects and decreased in others? Because the process of converting students’ specific AP Exam points into scores on the 1–5 scale has become more precise.

The AP Program has a responsibility to use the best available evidence to determine whether students meet long-established learning objectives for college credit. Fairness to students and the universities they enter demands nothing less.

Advances in technology have improved how exam data are collected and analyzed, allowing statisticians to draw on input from hundreds of college professors and better determine which skills individual students are demonstrating on their AP Exams.

This work is part of a rigorous, evidence-based standards setting process, overseen for AP by Dr. Amy Hendrickson, the current president of the National Council on Measurement in Education. It’s the same process used by other large-scale assessment programs like American Diploma Project and PARCC.

When evidence shows students are not meeting expectations, pass rates go down. When evidence shows more students are meeting them, pass rates go up.

That’s exactly what we’ve seen.

From 2024 to 2025, pass rates rose significantly in subjects like AP English Language, AP Environmental Science, and AP Human Geography—because the student performance data showed more students were meeting the enduring learning objectives for these courses.

In other subjects, including AP Calculus BC, AP Statistics, AP Physics C: Mechanics, and both AP Government and Politics courses, pass rates declined—because fewer students met those enduring standards.

In both groups, the learning objectives for the courses didn’t change. The exams didn’t change. What changed is that students’ scores more accurately reflected whether they were meeting college-level expectations.

AP remains a rigorous, college-level program. The median pass rate across subjects is about 70 percent—a higher standard for awarding college credit than what other college-level programs apply, such as International Baccalaureate (about 80 percent) and dual enrollment or Cambridge courses (each around 90 percent).

To claim AP is being “dumbed down” dismisses the work of millions of students who take on this higher challenge each year.

We share concerns about grade inflation. That’s precisely why AP matters. Its standards are grounded in evidence of student learning, not grading trends or external pressure.

When expectations are clear and high, students rise to meet them. Our responsibility is to keep those expectations strong—and to measure them accurately.

That is what AP delivers—and what real rigor looks like.

Trevor Packer is senior vice president of Advanced Placement and Instruction at College Board.