By the time May rolls around, many students have spent long hours preparing for the AP exams they have to take. These exams cause students a lot of stress leading up to the testing date. After the exams students should get some much needed time to relax and focus on other classes, right? No, students are required to come to class after the AP exam to be exempt from the teacher made exam. AP students should not have to go to AP classes or take a final exam in those classes after the AP exam for many reasons.

If students have good grades and few absences they can get exempt from teacher-made exams. The school policy is, if you have an A and 5 absences or less, B and 3 or less, C and 1 or less for year long class you will be exempt. This is a good system because it gives students incentive to come to class and participate leading up to their AP exams.

 Many students will not come to class after the exam anyways. Under this system they have to take an exam on material learned over a month ago. If they have to take the exam, and do poorly on this test it can lower their grade in the class.

While the school year does not end until mid-June, at Reynolds AP exams start early in May. A whole class is crammed in a time period that is a month shorter than other classes. Students still have to take other exams in June. Those exams require a lot of effort and studying to do well on.

AP exam scores would be higher if they were taking place later in May or in early June. This would give more time for teachers to cover the content, as well as time to review in class.

While some AP teachers will still be teaching new content, many AP teachers will be doing activities and projects just to fill the time until the school year ends.

Many students will be mentally checked out of the class by this time since they have already taken the exam.. It will be hard enough to get underclassmen to come, but seniors will already be thinking about graduation and college, not going to class and watching movies. You might as well mark them absent before class even starts.

Some people may wonder what teachers would be doing if they have no students. Well, students still would be able to come to class and do whatever the teacher has prepared but the teachers can use this extra time to prepare for next year and figure out what they can do to better prepare their students for the exam.

There is no reason for students to have to go to their AP classes after they finish the exam. They spend so much time and effort preparing for the exam, that after the exam they cannot focus on that class if they are even doing anything at all. They are better off spending that time and effort on other exams.