L ATIMES.COM SATURDAY, APRIL 4, 2020B
CITY & STATE
For 65 years, the
Advanced Placement test
has been a hallmark of a rig-
orous high school education,
allowing bright students to
demonstrate mastery of a
subject through a passing
score that can lead to college
credits.
Students typically gird
for the grueling exam in long
study sessions with friends
or outside class hours with
teachers. It’s not unusual for
parents to hire specialized
tutors. For some students, it
becomes a point of pride to
report how many AP courses
they are taking.
But amid the COVID-
pandemic, this year’s test
will be like no other, accord-
ing to new details released
Friday by the College Board,
the New York-based non-
profit that owns the test.
Normally, there are doz-
ens of multiple-choice ques-
tions. Those will be gone.
The free-response questions
will be winnowed down from
a typical four or so to one or
two, which will be timed
separately and submitted.
The exams will be taken
at home with open books
and notes and will last only
about 45 minutes, signifi-
cantly shorter than the
standard three- to four-hour
duration. The exams can be
taken on any device avail-
able — a computer, tablet or
smartphone. Or students
can write responses by hand
and submit a photo via their
cellphones.
To ensure all students
have access to the test, the
College Board said it is work-
ing with partners to provide
thousands of Chromebooks
and tablets, along with
broadband internet access,
to all who need them.
The revised format
brought varied reactions. At
Mayfield Senior School, an
all-girls Catholic school in
Pasadena, students enrolled
in an AP Calculus BC (sec-
ond and third stage) class
expressed a range of reac-
tions: relief, disappointment
and excitement by the chal-
lenge of taking the test in an
entirely new way.
Megan Moffat, who says
she’s “kind of a thrill seeker,”
was eager to test herself on
racing through a shorter
exam on which every ques-
tion will carry higher stakes.
Isabel Valenzuela said itwill be easier to keep up
stamina with a shorter test;
when she took the full-
length practice exam —
more than three hours long
—she found herself getting
antsy. “I can just use all of my
energy and power for a
shorter sprint than for, like,
the marathon,” she said.
Trevor Packer, a College
Board senior vice president
who heads the AP program,
said such student dedica-
tion is why the nonprofit de-
cided to dismiss early
thoughts about potentially
canceling the exam when
the coronavirus outbreak
prompted schools to send
students home and shift to
online learning.
In a survey of 18,000 AP
students, 91% said they
wanted to take the test and
filled 900 pages with com-
ments about why. Many said
studying was their “last ves-
tige of academic normalcy,”
having lost their sports sea-
sons, proms, graduation
ceremoniesand senior-year
trips, Packer said.
But testing officials had
to satisfy themselves that
they could create a fair and
secure online exam before
committing to one, he said.
Key areas of concern in-
cluded equitable access for
students with disabilities
and those without adequate
devices or broadband ac-
cess. Colleges and universi-
ties would need to agree to
award college credit for
passing scores.
And strict measures had
to be taken to prevent and
detect cheating, another
pressing issue.
To avoid leaks, the same
tests will be given at the
same time throughout the
nation, from May 11 to May- Makeup test dates will be
available for each subject
from June 1 to June 5. For
California students, the
tests will be administered at
9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., de-
pending on the subject.
Points will not be earned
from content that can be
found in textbooks or online.
Rather than multiple-choice
questions, there will be
short-response and docu-
ment-based questions that
require synthesis of materi-
al, application of concepts
and critical thinking. Soft-
ware will be used to detect a
student’s unique identity
and style of online interac-
tions, Packer said, along
with plagiarism or similar
answers among groups of
students.
If students get caught
cheating, the penalties will
be severe. They will be
blocked from testing or their
AP scores will be canceled.
Their high school will be no-
tified, as will colleges or
other organizations to which
the student has already sent
College Board scores, in-
cluding the SAT. And they
may be prohibited from tak-
ing a future AP exam, as well
as the SAT, SAT subject
tests or other assessments,
the nonprofit said.
Those strict security
measures drew praise from
some students. “I feel like
this is a great option for AP
exams pertaining to how it
would eliminate the need to
cheat, since that was a main
concern with taking the ex-
ams online,” said Upland
High School student Jade
Hollingsworth.
Pencils down.
The AP exam
is going virtual
Amid school closures,
students will take
new, shorter-format
tests from home.
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One form of distance
learning can be as easy as
turning on a low-tech tool —
the television.
In a partnership de-
signed to provide students
and parents — especially
low-income households
without Wi-Fi access — an
alternative to online classes,
the Los Angeles school dis-
trict teamed upwith PBS
SoCal/KCET and San Fran-
cisco’s KQED to offer a slate
of educational program-
ming.
It’s popular. Two weeks
into the partnership, the
three stations involved were
viewed by an average of
140,000 homes — and nearly
200,000 people — a day, ac-
cording to PBS. More than
70 television stations across
the country have picked up
the LAUSD/PBS schedule,
including all PBS stations in
California.
With schools closed, the
partnership also offers
games, activities, videos and
supplemental reading mate-
rial for families with online
access.
For pre-K to third-grade
viewers, “Pinkalicious &
Peterrific,” about the adven-
tures of a pair of siblings,
serves as a social studies les-
son, while “Peg + Cat,”
about a girl who solves word
problems, reinforces math
knowledge. Episodes of
“NOVA,” the long-running
PBS documentary series,
emphasize science for
grades 4to 8.
For older students,
Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s four-
part series “Black America
Since MLK: And Still I Rise”
acts as a social studies class.
Before each show aimed
at grades 4to 8 or 9 to 12, PBS
airs one-minute videos with
prompts for each episode
that are answered after the
show.How do I watch?
The programming is
spread across three local
PBS channels grouped by
age range. Each week’s
schedule is published online
ahead of time.
8 PBS SoCal airs pro-
gramming for pre-K to third
grade from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.
8 KLCSdivides program-
ming between pre-K to third
grade from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m.,
grades 4to 8 from 8 a.m. to 2
p.m., and grades 9 to 12 from
2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
8 KCET airs program-
ming for grades 9to 12 from 9
a.m. to 3 p.m.
The shows are also avail-
able for streaming on the
PBS Video and PBS Kids
apps.What are the
programs like?
For families without
other options, the TV pro-
gramming is meant to standon its own.
But families may benefit
most from combining televi-
sion viewing with PBS’ on-
line resources. Children in
grades 4 to 8 watching “Afri-
ca’s Great Civilizations” also
have access to a map of the
areas being discussed or an
excerpt from Gates’ travel
journal in Timbuktu. Stu-
dents in grades 9 to 12 can
read President Woodrow
Wilson’s Declaration of
Neutrality as they watch
“The Great War: American
Experience Part 1,” a docu-
mentary on World War I.
To receive the daily activ-
ities and links to online tools,
parents and teachers can
check the At-Home Learn-
ing homepage, sign up for
the At-Home Learning
newsletteror follow @KCETon Twitter.What teachers say
Teachers and education
advocates have praised the
district for attempting to
meet the needs of low-in-
come families as schools
transition to distance
learningbut say TV learning
works best as a supplement
to educator-led programs.
“I was in the middle of an
earth science unit, in the
middle of a chapter book, in
the middle of a math unit,”
said Misti Kemmer, a fourth-
grade teacher at Russell Ele-
mentary School in South
Los Angeles. “They can
watch TV all day long, it’s not
going to catch them up on
the fourth-grade-level
standards that I was in the
middle of teaching them.”The program caters to
broad age groups across
multiple schools across the
country, which makes it im-
possible to replicate the spe-
cific lessons students were
doing before schools closed,
teachers said.
“It’s no substitute for the
kids being in school,” Kem-
mer said.A mom’s view
Rochelle Srigley, a single
mother and freelance public
relations consultant, dove
headfirst into homeschool-
ing when her daughters’ ele-
mentary school in Burbank
closed last week.
Srigley is using the PBS
At-Home Learning program
as a supplement to the
homework and teacher-
assigned activities her
daughters received from
school. They watch “Pinkali-
cious” and other shows,
then her daughters use her
laptop to complete online
activities.
For pre-K to third grades,
activities could be a PDF
worksheetasking them to
write a story, an art lesson,
or an interactive game.
“The kids really like it and
it’s teaching them some-
thing, but it’s fun,” said
Srigley, who wrote about the
partnership on Rockin
Mommies, her blog for single
moms in L.A. “It’s just an-
other tool, basically, because
you’re trying to come up
with a million things to do.”PBS makes its kids shows even more educational
PBSand LAUSD have partnered to offer educational
programs, such as the math-oriented “Peg + Cat.”PBSBy Arit John
SACRAMENTO —Cali-
fornia has made little prog-
ress in reducing the number
of felons and mentally ill
people who improperly own
firearms even as state
agents have confiscated
thousands of weapons from
prohibited owners, accord-
ing to a new report from the
state Department of Justice.
The report was released
at a time when Los Angeles
County and other local juris-
dictions have ordered gun
stores closedover concerns
about crowds of gun buyers
gathering to stock up on fire-
arms and ammunition dur-
ing the shutdown over
COVID-19.
The FBI this week sepa-
rately reported a 41% jump
last monthin background
checks for people seeking to
buy guns in the U.S., com-
pared withMarch 2019.
The number of people in
the state’s database who
have guns though they are
barred from owning them to-
taled 22,424 as of Jan. 1, down
just 798 from 23,222 a year
earlier because nearly as
many people were added to
the list as were removed by
state Justice Department
agents.
The large number of peo-
ple in the state’s Armed and
Prohibited Persons System,
or APPS, has been a concern
of lawmakers for more than
six years as the state has
struggled with a series of
mass shootingsand despite
additional funding aimed at
addressing staffing shortag-
es in the program.
In an annual report re-
quired by the Legislature,
the agency said its agents
last year recovered 2,130 fire-
arms but said it was ham-
pered by inadequate staffing
and other issues.
Assembly Republican
Leader Marie Waldron of Es-
condido called the number
of people on the list “unac-
ceptable.”
“This is a persistent and
maddening problem that I
don’t think our attorney
general or his predecessor
have made into the priority
it should be,” she said in a
statement, noting that she
hoped to work with state
Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra on
doubling the number of fire-
arms recovered next year.
To improve results, the
state Justice Department
report recommended re-
quiring all courts to confis-
cate weapons at the time of
conviction, better coordina-
tion with county law enforce-
ment and modernization of
the database to reduce ma-
nual processes.
“Even during these chal-
lenging times, we remain
committed to maintaining
critical operations and keep-
ing firearms out of the hands
of dangerous and violent in-
dividuals,” Becerra said in a
statement, adding that he
will work with the governor
and lawmakers “to ensure
we have the tools and re-sources necessary to tackle
dynamic firearms chal-
lenges head on.”
In 2006, California be-
came the first state to create
a database that matches the
names of people who buy
firearms with those who are
later convicted of a felony,
determined to have serious
mental illness or otherwise
are disqualified from pos-
sessing guns.
The state stepped up ef-
forts to reduce a backlog on
the list after the 2012 mass
shooting at Sandy Hook Ele-
mentary School in New-
town, Conn., which resulted
in the death of 20 children
and six adults.
At that time, the Legisla-
ture approved $24 million
over three years to reduce
the backlog of prohibited
persons that had topped
20,000 people.
But the state has been
unable to significantly cut
the number of prohibited
persons, according to the
annual report sent to the
Legislature late Wednesday.
Last year, the Justice De-
partment removed 9,
people from the APPS data-
base by seizing their fire-
arms or determining they no
longer own guns or have
been cleared of disqualifica-
tions.
However, 8,957 were add-
ed to the database last year,
when the Justice Depart-
menthad 45 special agents
and special agent supervi-
sors working on the issue,
fewer than the 50 agents as-signed to the task in 2018.
“Despite a recent salary
increase, efforts to hire new
sworn personnel continue to
be thwarted by the difficult
working conditions and lack
of competitive compensa-
tion for agents as compared
to other state and local law
enforcement agencies,” the
Justice Department report
said.
At the start of this year,
54% of peoplein the APPS
database were barred from
owning firearms because of
a felony conviction, 24% be-
cause of federal law involv-
ing gun violations, 19% were
subject to a restraining or-
der, and 18% were banned
from having a gun because of
mental health problems.
Others were on the list
because of serious misde-
meanor convictions or as a
condition of probation.
Advocates for gun own-
ers have sued the state in re-
cent years to remove nonvio-
lent felons and misdemean-
ants from the list of prohib-
ited persons, and three of
the cases are pending in the
court of appeals, according
to the Firearms Policy Coali-
tion, which is supporting the
litigation.
“Our position is that non-
violent felons should not be
prohibited from possessing
or acquiring arms, and that
California’s APPS program
is a dismal failure that does
little but give politicians a
topic for press releases,” the
group said in a statement
Wednesday.AREPORTon gun ownership by felons in California came as some jurisdictions sought to close firearm stores
amid the COVID-19 crisis. Above, people line up at a Burbank gun store last month, before L.A. County’s order.
Raul RoaTimes Community NewsState lags on reducing the
number of felons with guns
Report comes as a record number of Americans are buying firearms
By Patrick McGreevy