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FRI.| 4-12-24 | ENTERTAINMENT
AP absences rise as AP exams are completed
MON. | 08-15-22 | OPINION
When in an Advanced Placement (AP) class, one of the most stress-relieving feelings is when you have finally taken your AP exam for that class. All that hard work over the school year has paid off, and more importantly, no more learning for that subject is needed considering the exam is over with. However, students must still show up to the class even though they are already done with the curriculum.
The reason that students must still attend is often based solely on absences, considering a student cannot have more than 10 absences in a class. In multiple cases, since there is no more necessary material for students to learn after the exam, no instruction goes on
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during class which results in kids just sitting at their desk waiting for the bell to ring. Without the consequences of having too many absences, many students would not attend these classes after the exam because of there being no academic benefits given to them.
Don’t get me wrong; in some classes there are activities done after the exam that can be useful to students, but considering college students do not attend their classes after they have taken the exam, AP classes should not count absences after the exam. In college, a student takes the exam and is done for the year, but for us in high school, we have to sit in class for another month. Oftentimes, students wake up at 7:30 a.m. in the morning and head to their first period class just to watch a movie or sit on their phones. This is a huge waste of time for those who just want to relax after spending the year studying and anticipating the end of said AP class.
Keeping up with attendance is also a struggle since last year because absences were not counted with it being affected by COVID-19. It is very difficult for students to adapt from not being concerned about how many absences they have, to being required to do make-up school after receiving 10 absences in a class.
I am in no way dismissing classes that still do activities after the exam. However, most of these assignments are able to be completed at home and submitted on Canvas. I just think that students doing the same coursework and curriculum as college students should deserve the same treatment in that they are not required to still attend class after they have already taken their exam.
I don’t think this is a heavy demand considering that there is less than a month of school left and no required curriculum left for students. So much stress would be taken off of students by not having to attend AP classes. While some might think this would enable students to start skipping their other classes, I don’t believe this would be the case because those classes' absences would still count and they are still learning material that is necessary for their exams and overall grades.
