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2005 Exam Info

Results from the 2005 Exam (taken from the AP mailing list)

The slides from our APNC "Meet the Committee" session are available
online, and I urge anyone interested to check them out. (These also have
the free response questions and data on the 2005 exam)

http://www.creighton.edu/~davereed/Talks/APNC2005.pdf

As a quick summary, student performance on the A exam was comparable
(perhaps slightly lower) than 2004 and previous years; performance on the
AB exam was better than 2004 and approached the performance level of
previous years. Specific points to note:

Students on the A exam did poorly on the "design" question, A2. This
was somewhat surprising as the question was similar to last year's design
question (although a bit more complex). Performance on this question
suggest that many A students did not fully understand inheritance,
polymorphism, and private vs. public. On the AB exam, performance on the
"design" question, AB2, was good. This was notable as this question had
many new elements, including data structure design and written
description/analysis of that structure. In general, it was felt that students were much more comfortable with
Java Collection classes this year. AB students did have an extremely
difficult time with AB3, the tree/recursion question. Traditionally,
this type of question tends to be the most difficult on the test, but this
year's question was especially tricky. For teachers who may have been
tempted to deemphasize linked list and tree manipulation in favor of
Collection classes, it should be noted that they are still part of the
AB curriculum.

Student performance on the MBCS questions were good overall, except
that A3 had an extremely large number of blanks. If the blanks are
disregarded, performance on the questions was good, but the number of
blanks suggest that many A students are either not seeing the case study
or are taking very little from it. This is worrisome. AB performance on
the MBCS question, AB1, was excellent.

You can get more details and specific numbers from the session slides.

Dave Reed
Chief Reader of APCS
Creighton University

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