The College Board has offered Advanced Placement (AP) exams since the 1950s, with the first AP exams given in 1956. The program was created to let high school students prove college-level mastery and, in many cases, earn college credit before stepping on a college campus.
In 2026, however, the end-of-year AP exams no longer solely test students’ knowledge of the courses. In AP history courses especially, they test whether students can master a specific College Board writing game.
Many students are familiar with the traditional English test. A passage is read, analyzed and interpreted by the student, who is then asked questions about their understanding of the passage. Many English tests also include at least one essay, often written formulaically. This structure makes sense in an English class because it tests reading, writing and interpretation, which are the fundamental skills of the course.
Despite this, AP history exams often follow an eerily similar structure. AP U.S. History, AP World History: Modern and AP European History all include multiple-choice questions, short-answer questions, a document-based question (DBQ) and a long essay question. The DBQ, which is worth 25% of the score, asks students to read documents and construct an argument around them.
That sounds more like AP English Language and Composition than a history course should. In AP English Language, the first free-response question is a synthesis essay, where students read sources and build an argument. In AP history courses, the DBQ asks students to do nearly the same thing, just with historical documents instead of modern sources.
Obviously, history requires reading. Obviously, historians use documents. But the issue is balance. A student can know the Cold War, Reconstruction or the Industrial Revolution and still lose points because they did not format a thesis correctly, source enough documents, contextualize the period properly or chase what the rubric calls a complexity point that sounds sophisticated enough.
At that point, the exam is no longer just testing history. It is testing whether students can perform College Board’s version of historical writing under a strict timer. This is not good for historical education and needs changing.
This does not mean the DBQ should disappear. It is probably the best part of the exam when used correctly. It forces students to work with primary and secondary sources and not just memorize dates. But the exam gives writing structure too much power over content knowledge.
AP history classes should reward students who understand cause and effect, change over time and historical significance, in a way that they can understand. Instead, the exam often rewards students who memorize how to earn rubric points, which often leads to students flushing their knowledge of history down the drain once they leave the testing room. There is a difference between knowing history and knowing how to write for a scorer who has hundreds of essays to read.
This problem also changes the classroom. Teachers do not only have to teach history. They have to teach the test. Students spend weeks practicing thesis formulas, sourcing phrases and DBQ outlines because those skills can decide the score. The course becomes less about understanding the past and more about surviving the exam.
At Midtown, AP World History and AP U.S. History are listed among the school’s AP social sciences courses. For students taking those classes, the exam can shape the entire year.
The College Board should keep source analysis, but it should reduce the weight of formulaic writing and reading comprehension. More of the score should come from direct historical knowledge, shorter explanations and questions that ask students to connect events without turning every answer into a mini AP English Language essay.
History exams should test history first. They should still ask students to read, write and argue, but those skills should support the content, not replace it. If AP history exams are supposed to prove college-level knowledge, then students should not feel like they are being tested more on the structure of the exam than on the history they spent all year learning.
