Editorial: Students with invalidated AP exams should retest

And the timing of the announcement is also terribly unfortunate in that many students who need to retest are already prepping to go away to college and making last-minute adjustments for a major life event. Just about the last thing anyone who already went through the process of studying and taking AP exams is to squeeze in a retest of those exams before heading off to college.

But here they are facing that exact scenario. Our advice is to just grin and bear it. The San Mateo Union High School District Board of Trustees voted in closed session yesterday to pursue legal remedies against the College Board and Educational Testing Service, the College Board’s security provider that administers the AP exams. The board is hiring the heavy-hitting Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy law firm of Burlingame to assist it with the aim of expediting a reversal of the College Board’s decision.

While this is a major undertaking, there is a strong possibility the conclusion of such an effort would take a while. In the meantime, students awaiting the result could be in limbo with their classes and maybe even unable to take higher level classes while seeing if their AP exams could preclude the need for them. The pull for legal action is understandable since so many seem so wronged. From all accounts, it seems as if there were seating irregularities rather than rampant cheating and that there should have been some flexibility in the decision to invalidate a large swath of exams. However, it also seems as if the College Board is a monopoly that is beyond reproach. There may be some larger legislative cure that would limit its monopoly or at least provide for a better complaint and appeal process when it comes to perceived irregularities. The legal pursuit may also provide some future remedy to this process. Both are efforts worth pursuing but whether they might assist students in their current situation is unknown.

Students who had their tests invalidated should sign up for the retest today so they can take it in August. Another lesson here is that Mills High School administrators should be sure they are in compliance with the College Board requirements for testing in the future regardless of what alternative procedures were followed in the past. We all know now the perils of not doing so.