With the close of another school year, another testing season, and another successful AP Reading session, thousands of us sit here on July 7, 2024 awaiting the results of student exam performance on AP exams. It is almost impossible to explain the feelings of score release day (or really, score release eve) to non-teachers. It can be like waiting for birthday or holiday gifts. Except, the gift isn’t tangible, and can sometimes feel like punishment rather than reward. The thoughts seem to not only take over, but ramble uncontrollably. “Did I spend enough time on rhetorical analysis?”, “Maybe I should have given more feedback on their work”, “I feel so good about the multiple choice activities I added this year; surely that is enough to improve my scores?”.

If you are new to this, here is what you might expect tomorrow, on score release day.

1. You will try to login to AP Classroom only to realize the summer brain fog has already made you forget your password. You spend an hour trying to remember, reset, or recover said password.
   • Oh – and, by the way, if you have not yet – go ahead and try to access AP Classroom today as ALL teachers must reset accounts to email logins rather than user IDs. May the odds be ever in your favor.
2. Once you get in you will see your students’ scores, by class period if you have more than one block.
3. You will see an overall score of 1-5. No, you will not see what individual students scored on each separate component of the exam.
   • Interested in how these scores are set / determined? Click HERE.
4. You will exclaim “what the hell, Ben – did you just sleep through the exam?” followed immediately by “woahhhhh, Emily, didn’t see that coming. Good for you!” Resist the urge to go find the deserters.
5. You might take to various social media threads or group text chains to celebrate or to lament.
6. If your scores are less successful than you hoped or predicted, you will feel shame, frustration, anger, and maybe sadness. If your scores are quite good, and you celebrate, you might also feel shame as you might get attacked for appearing to brag. What is this? Teachers can’t win day?
7. You slam the laptop shut, or throw the phone across the room, maybe yell at some member of your household because they were breathing too loudly, and the black cloud of score release day will stick with you like a bottom shelf liquor hangover from college. You proclaim that you don’t want to do this anymore, the stress is not worth it, and perhaps inevitably turn your frustration to the exam itself, the scoring guide, the scoring process, or College Board the entity.

Before you throw in the towel, take a breath, pour a nice cup of tea or maybe a pinot (chianti for me), and take a few days away. When you come back, here are a few tips and reminders:

1. This exam can be a gauntlet for students. Even your most adept learner can have an unexpected bad day. Illness, distractions at home, the dreaded teenage breakup the night before. The student you all but guaranteed would earn a qualifying score – did not. This is not a reflection of your instruction, nor of that student’s improvement throughout the year.
2. As cliche as it sounds, and as patronizing as I realize this might feel, comparison is in fact the thief of joy. The classroom makeup of groups across the globe are so astoundingly different. Some schools have sophomores enrolled in AP Lang. Elsewhere classes may be juniors or seniors. Some schools are structured such that most all students attending are advanced, and thus perhaps they require less building of basic skills. Some schools’ enrollment is almost exclusively students reading well below grade level. Yet YOU are doing the great work of exposing them to college level skills. You cannot allow the extremely high scores from other teachers deter you or make you feel like you are a less skilled instructor. Likewise, you cannot allow those with lower qualifying percentages make you feel guilty for having a higher rate.
3. Remember that these exams were scored by trained colleagues who spent a week (or two in some cases) giving your students’ essays the most fair assessment they could. Try not to turn your frustrations to the scoring. Again, sometimes our kids have a bad test day.
4. Your next steps:
   • Connect with people or things that energize you. Another year will begin before we can finish that cup of tea (or chianti) we just poured. So – nap, read a book, hang with friends, go out dancing – or, if lesson planning brings you relaxation and joy, go for it.
   • Once instructional reports are released, take some time to reflect. Use your instructional planning report to determine what worked for your classroom and what needs some updates. (Watch for an instructional planning best practices post to come here on this site)
   • Lean on teacher communities – at your school, on social media, or through summer workshops – to get advice, strategies, and new resources. Don’t try to go it alone.
5. MOST IMPORTANTLY: While much easier said than done, let go. Let go of this year’s scores so that you can be your best for next year’s students. Remember: You are not your students’ scores. Again, you are not your students’ scores. With many of us feeling pressure from state, district, and school level leaders to perform by way of exam percentages, it is quite hard to separate ourselves from this data. However, remember that part about kids having bad days? Sometimes they also just don’t want to test. There are so many things we cannot control. We can control our own commitment to professional development, learning, and growing. We can control showing up week after week for our kids and preparing them the best we know how. And we can control lifting one another up for these very same reasons. But we cannot control exam day. You are your students’ mentor, sometimes confidante, instructor, and guide. But, you are not your students’ scores.

You are:

A teacher. On summer break. Reading. Or dancing. Or lesson planning. Right now, on pins and needles as you wait to login tomorrow to see the results of an entire school year’s work. But, we have all been here, year after year. Life is short. Summer is shorter. Try to remember YOU in the midst of the weight of the exam that we all carry.