Late-Starting Schools Have Less Time to Prep for AP Exams. Does It Matter?

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For the 2024-25 school year, Advanced Placement exams will be administered between May 5 and 16. Beyond a small number of exemptions, all students in all states must take the same tests on the same dates, at the same times.

High schools in states that start after Labor Day end up with fewer instructional days before the exams than those that open their doors in mid-August, and sometimes even in late July. Does this discrepancy create a difference in results?

Having had three children in NYC public high schools, where classes start in September, I’ve repeatedly heard from their teachers that they don’t have enough time to cover all the material on the AP tests.

My daughter reports of her AP Calculus class, “We have to do a lesson a day. Every time we take a test we are, technically, falling behind, because it takes a whole period. So we’re learning new material (sometimes in a different unit) while still studying for the test on material we’ve already moved on from.”

I asked fellow NYC moms and dads whether the same was true at their schools.

“My student goes to Stuyvesant,” an NYC mom confirmed. “The AP European History class follows a ridiculously regimented schedule. The entire year is already mapped out to the day. This is surely an artifact of the tight timeline the teacher is forced to follow to cover the material before the spring exam.”

“I experienced it as a student in the early ’90s in a post-Labor Day-start school system,” Elizabeth Jones Polkovitz, another NYC public school parent, said. “It’s a month of instruction or more! It can make a really big difference for Calc BC in particular. We really had to rush sequences and series. And we had to rush through sections of [AP U.S. History]. My kid experienced the same. The end of [these classes] were a sprint for both of us, 30 years apart.”

A contributor with a student in an NYC private school revealed that her child’s teacher “often has students do a unit or two of work in summer before school starts for many of the AP classes.”

This is not a problem exclusive to NYC. National message boards like College Confidential find parents lamenting: Living in a state that goes back after Labor Day and having multiple kids take AP, I have seen firsthand how teachers push topics together to try to get everything to fit in. 

While over on Reddit, teachers and students assert:

• Schools that don’t start until late August and early September are at a disadvantage. States that start school in early August get an extra month of instructional time before AP tests.

• We don’t start until after Labor Day. I teach AP Calc AB, and it is impossible to cover all of the material without feeling like I have to rush every lesson.

• To teach my AP class using the minimum recommended time described by the College Board, I would have to see my students for over 27 more class periods than I currently have.

• My school started around Aug. 3. My friend in New York started after Labor Day. I had an entire month to teach the same material for the same AP test.

• I’m in NY and recently learned that the states that start school sooner (August, like AZ) get 40 weeks to prep for the exam, versus our 32.

• My AP Biology teacher … told us that we would have to study the last part of the course ourselves.

• There were … not enough instruction days to cover all the material. [My teacher] would choose a few chapters that were purely homework, and then have one or two optional afterschool workshops to go over the material.

It’s out of concern for this AP inequity, among other factors, that 70% of U.S. public school students now begin class before Labor Day.

For Michigan: An earlier start to the school year… lets students and teachers have the maximum amount of instructional time prior to the start of standardized tests and assessments.

In Wisconsin: The early start calendar gives… AP students more learning time before taking exams in the spring. (The district changed to a September start but planned “to offer more learning time for AP … students during ‘Saturday academies’ and summer school.”)

And for California: It… gives students more time to prepare for… Advanced Placement exams.

The assumption is that more time to prepare for AP tests will lead to better outcomes.

Surprisingly, the data doesn’t show that.

The three states with the “highest percentage of public high school graduates scoring a 3 or higher on an AP exam,” according to the College Board, are Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey, all of which begin school at the end of August or after Labor Day. The three lowest-scoring states, Oklahoma, Kansas and Mississippi, start Aug. 13, Aug. 15 and in late July/early August, respectively. 

Not coincidentally, the wealthiest states by personal income are Massachusetts, Connecticut (ranked No. 5 by AP scores), New York and New Jersey. Mississippi is the poorest, with Oklahoma and Kansas placing in the bottom half.

The College Board stopped breaking down AP scores by socioeconomic status in 2021. But a 2020 data analysis study concluded, “the performance levels for low-income test-takers has not dramatically shifted from the early 2000s: 60% of students from this demographic group only earned a 1 or 2 out of a possible 5 on the exam.” It’s highly unlikely that’s changed since.

So maybe all that cramming isn’t necessary if you live in a high-income state. For low-income students, some teachers may generously schedule extra study sessions to fit in material they don’t have time to cover. But students of means, even if their teachers decline to go above and beyond, will still do just fine — because their families can simply hire a private tutor.

Despite what seems like inequity, success on AP exams may have less to do with when classes begin and more with whether you live in a state where students can afford to learn everything they need outside of them.

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