This year, College Board has altered the AP European History (AP Euro) curriculum in order to be more consistent with AP U.S History (APUSH) and AP World History courses. The class now contains new curriculum, different tests and an entirely remodeled AP exam.

Adjustments have been made to the AP Euro rubric to align with APUSH. The document based questions (DBQ) have a stricter criteria, and the free response questions (FRQ) have been changed to long essay questions (LEQ), according to AP Euro teacher Jessica Drogos. With clearer guidelines, teachers hope to see growth.

“So far it has provided a lot of direction,” Drogos said. “It takes the questioning out of subjectivity in regards to the essays and how they are graded because there is such spelled out criteria.”

There will be more emphasis on stimulus-based questions, such as those that answer questions from a letter, painting, map or graph. The goal is to encourage students to think more like a historian, Drogos said.

It will take a full year for College Board to analyze the differences and progression from the course. So, it is too early to tell if the course will be successful and beneficial. Past AP Euro students believe the new curriculum is beneficial because the essay portion is more direct, and the format is more similar to APUSH.

“I actually feel at a disadvantage now because the classes were so different,” Avery Denning  ’17 said.

Not only is the course new to students, but to the teachers as well. After 15 years of teaching a course that has had few changes, Drogos and LT’s other AP Euro teacher, Keith Bailey must adapt. Drogos attended a week long conference at Northwestern and Bailey attended one in California in order to learn the new curriculum.

“It is a lot of work,” Drogos said, “[Bailey] and I collaborate much more closely now which is really nice to create the redesigned course for our students. Two heads being put together is better than one, and I think we’re putting out a quality product.”