Exam used for college credit canceled due to coronavirus. How that affects California students

As worldwide attempts to prevent the spread of coronavirus continue, the International Baccalaureate, a worldwide program offering rigorous coursework for college credit, announced Tuesday that all exams will be canceled.

The exams, which high school students spend the last two years of their education preparing for, are the latest cancellations due to the spread of the virus. This is the first time IB has canceled its exams.

Last week, states began to suspend standardized testing for all K-12 students required by the federal government’s Every Student Succeeds Act. Advanced Placement exams for high school students will be shortened and moved online. And SAT and ACT exams have been rescheduled.

IB’s curriculum is offered in nearly 5,000 schools in over 150 countries, according to its website. The IB exams were originally scheduled for April 30 through May 22. Students who score well on the exams receive college credit. The program helps students remain competitive in their college applications.

But with massive school closures, teachers have fewer opportunities to prepare students for the exams and the International Baccalaureate Organization will instead award credit based on students’ coursework and internal exams they finished throughout the year, according to a news release.

Students “will be awarded a Diploma or a Course Certificate which reflects their standard of work,” read a statement from the organization. “This is based on student’s coursework and the established assessment expertise, rigor and quality control already built into the programmes.”

Sacramento schools with IB programs

More than 10 high schools in the Sacramento region offer the advanced curriculum, including Roseville Joint Unified’s Granite Bay High, Oakmont High, and Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento and Natomas Unified’s Inderkum High.

Shahd Alnashashibi, a senior at Al-Arqam Islamic School and College Preparatory, spent more than $700 on the exams with plans to earn an IB diploma.

It’s unclear if students will receive refunds for the exam fees, because they are still receiving a score to use for college credits.

Alnashashibi applied to eight California universities, mostly University of California schools. She continues to wait for acceptance letters from some schools, including Stanford.

“They haven’t told us much, so I am still anxious and confused,” she said about IB’s announcement. “I’m worried about how the credits will be scored.”

IB officials said they will provide more information to schools and students later this week.

Alnashashibi said she pursued the IB diploma in an effort to improve her studying habits for college. She plans to major in biomedical engineering.

Now, she says, she’s concerned she won’t receive college credit if the program only scores students based on the internal assessments they worked on throughout the year.

“I think I would have done much better on the written exams in May,” she said. “We have been preparing for these exams for two years, in comparison to the internal assessments that we pretty much completed independently.”

What happens without tests?

Mira Abulhaija, also a senior, said she was relieved but also concerned to hear the exams were canceled.

“I think this might be an advantage for students,” she said. “But internal assessments are not an accurate measure of our coursework. Some of the essays don’t cover all of the material that we would have been tested on.”

Kari Lev, an IB coordinator and teacher in the Simi Valley Unified School District in Ventura County, said she understands why students across California and the world are concerned, but believes the school assessments will illustrate students’ knowledge in the material.

“None of us expected these (internal) assessments to be weighted so heavily,” Levi said of IB’s decision to use the students’ coursework as a final grading measure. “But we prepared students for the exams with (the internal assessments). It’s a better option than an online, take home exam.”

Some IB teachers and students wondered if the exams could be administered online, similar to the recent decision to conduct AP exams online the first time in history.

The College Board, which administers the exams along with the SAT, said they surveyed more than 18,000 AP test takers, and the majority did not want the exams canceled. AP test administrators are taking security precautions to ensure that students don’t cheat.

Shaan Patel, a college admissions expert and the founder of Prep Expert, said springtime is a very high test period for college admission and AP exams.

“For many of those courses, April is review anyway,” Patel said. “But we may have students who missed about two to three weeks of new content.”

Patel said he believes students taking AP exams this year could see a negative impact on their scores if they are self-disciplined. Like IB exams, high AP test scores allow students to earn college credits.

“I recommend creating a separate study schedule at home,” he said. “The more time students have to prepare specifically for these exams than to be bogged down by other activities, the better they do. So they do have an opportunity to do better. Of course, they will have to adapt to a new format.”

Elementary and middle school students will not take state standardized testing until next year.

Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order saying he is seeking a waiver from the federal government to cancel exams in the state.

The California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) Assessments are taken by more than 6 million public school students each spring. The exams provide data that helps measure student skills against the same academic standards, and the “results provide information schools can use to improve teaching and learning,” according to the state department of education.

This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 2:09 PM.