John Boylan

[Trevor Packer @AP_Trevor]

The 2026 AP English Language and Composition Exam scores:
5: 15%; 4: 28%; 3: 32%; 2: 15%; 1: 10%

The 2026 AP English Language and Composition exam was taken by 631,000 students, ~4% of the U.S. high school population.

The exam questions and essay topics were developed by a committee of college faculty, including English professors from Duke University, Florida State University, the University of Maryland and the University of California systems — and master AP teachers from across the nation.

Multiple-Choice Questions (MCQ)

1.The highest-performing area were questions assessing students’ ability to accurately identify Claims and Evidence within texts across a wide range of styles and complexities. These students are reading arguments carefully and identifying how evidence functions. Students achieving AP 5s typically answered 100% of these questions correctly, while students achieving AP 4s generally only missed a single point, and students achieving AP 3s typically earned 75% or more of the possible points.

2.Students also scored very well on questions related to analyzing and understanding the Rhetorical Situation in reading (about 81%). Students earning AP 4s and 5s generally answered 100% of these questions right, and students earning AP 3s missed only a single point here.

3.The most challenging MCQ area was Style — questions in which students were asked to identify features and aspects of writers’ style in the passages they analyzed. Only 5 MCQs focus on this area, and they neatly differentiated across student abilities: generally, students achieving AP 5s earned all 5 points possible, students earning AP 4s earned 4 of the 5 points, and students earning AP 3s earned 3 of these 5 points. Attending to a writer's word choice, syntax, and tone at the sentence level remains the area with the most room for further growth and improvement.

Free-Response Questions (FRQ)
https://t.co/27iWcsSm6G

Over a single 2-hour-and-15-minute session, students wrote three complete essays — a source-based synthesis argument, a rhetorical analysis, and an original argument — each demanding sustained reasoning and control of written English.

These three free-response questions span the core of the discipline — synthesizing sources into an argument, analyzing another writer's rhetorical choices, and constructing one's own argument — and I love that the committee anchored them in sources and ideas that students are not likely to already have examined in class: the value of napping and how we rest, what it means to do creative work, and how much weight we should give to other people's opinions. This is part of what the committee must do: select source material that students will not already have studied in class, so that on exam day students are drawing upon their own skills, not an interpretation already given to them by a teacher or AI.

Moreover, unlike AP English Literature and Composition, which focuses on novels, stories, drama, and poetry, AP English Language and Composition focuses on reading and analyzing non-fiction (speeches, essays, articles) and on writing argumentative, evidence-based, rhetorically effective essays, a powerful skill that is an anchor for a wide variety of career pathways.

Because AP scores are reported on a 5-point scale, the free-response rubrics deliberately include foundational points that separate AP 1s from 2s, mid-range points that distinguish 2s, 3s, and 4s, and a small number of advanced points designed to differentiate AP 5s from AP 4s.

FRQ #1, the Synthesis question on the value of napping, required students to read six authentic sources — reporting from national and international news outlets, a research university's findings, a data graph from a nonprofit health foundation, and a documentary photograph — then weigh competing evidence and build a defensible position. In short: college-level information literacy: evaluating real sources and putting them into conversation.

Nearly every student — about 98% — earned the thesis point, stating a defensible position. This is the foundational move that is expected even among students receiving AP 1.

The evidence-and-commentary rubric row is what most meaningfully differentiates across scores of 2, 3, 4, and 5. AP students receiving a 2 were usually able to earn just one of these points, whereas AP students receiving a 5 typically earned perfect scores on this row, not missing a single point. Selecting apt evidence from the sources and using commentary to explain how the evidence supports a line of reasoning — rather than merely quoting the sources — is what moved an essay up this scale.

FRQ #2 asked students to analyze how writer Laura Amy Schlitz uses rhetorical choices—including an extended kite-flying metaphor—to convey what it means to be a writer.

Why include a speech by a children's-book author, whose syntax and vocabulary in this speech are quite simple, on a college-level exam? Because the professors and educators who build the AP exams select passages the way college English faculty do: by stylistic, rhetorical, and interpretive complexity—not by Lexile scores, which measure only syntax, sentence length, and vocabulary. By that narrow metric, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Elie Wiesel, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Toni Morrison would all be disqualified: their Lexile scores are similar to Schlitz’s.

The statistics for this question are clear. FRQ #2 had a mean/max difficulty of .57—the hardest question on this year's exam, and consistent with the difficulty of FRQ #2 in prior years. Rhetorical and thematic complexity simply aren't the same as syntactical complexity, which is rarely the deciding factor when faculty choose what's worth analyzing.

As in FRQ #1, AP students receiving a 2 were usually able to earn just one of the evidence and commentary points, whereas AP students receiving a 5 typically earned perfect scores on this row, not missing a single point.

An impressive ~30,000 students earned the sophistication point for the skill with which they unpacked Schlitz’s rhetorical choices and strategies.

FRQ #3, the Argument question based on a claim by physician, engineer, and former astronaut Mae Jemison, asked students to argue the extent to which they found Jemison's claim valid.

Students generally found this essay slightly less challenging than FRQ #1, and significantly less challenging than FRQ #2, as demonstrated in their points earned.

Almost all students — about 98% — established a defensible thesis, the foundational point expected even of students receiving an AP 1.

Students receiving 2s were typically able to generate more effective evidence and commentary than in their other two essays, earning 2 of the 4 points possible here, so the real differentiation this essay provided was for students achieving AP 4s and AP 5s, who consistently earned all or all but one of the points possible.

So: real kudos to the students who succeeded on this exam. Three full essays, six sources to weigh, an artful piece of rhetoric to analyze, and an original argument to defend — all in a single sitting. The committee built a demanding, content-rich measure of college-level reading and writing, and it’s exciting to see such a significant number of students meeting these high standards.

All subjects' AP score distributions for 2026 will be posted here when available: https://t.co/OrkaQhPZYO

[Charlie Camosy @CCamosy]

This. So much this. One of the challenges we face in (higher) education cannot be met by timed, pressured in class writing. One needs the kind of writing which takes time. Multiple drafts. Wrestling with and even abandoning one's initial thoughts. Cannot give up on this practice.

[Zach Lowe @ZachLowe_NBA]

There is a Lowe Post from Sept. 2024 w/ Hanif about basketball, literature, Cleveland, struggles, life, etc. that was never released b/c...well, you know. We should do it again. If you are a hoops fan and have not read "There's Always This Year," rectify that now.

[Dylan @dmc_dmcc]

You are going to rob yourself of the ability to get better, to learn, to grow, to change, FOREVER, bc you might have a bit less of an ability than the world’s largest plagiarism machine in history.

Do not do that to yourself.

Do not stunt your brain and your learning abilities.

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

West High’s West Side Story staff has been named a 2026 IHSPA News Team of the Year finalist for the 10th straight year! 📰🏆 Incredible work, Trojans!

Read more about WSS Awards: https://t.co/8e66L7uesm

[Kareem Carr, Ph.D. @kareem_carr]

The most convincing proof that AIs are limited in their intelligence is that they can’t write. Writing is thinking, and their prose is the clearest evidence of how poorly they think.

[Heidi N. Moore @moorehn]

An MIT writing professor on his students using AI:

"I realized that for the first time as a writing professor, I had to deal with students producing words without work, which wasn’t quite plagiarism and wasn’t quite paying for someone else to do the job, but it felt like a kind of naive chicanery; a perversion of the contract between writer and reader."

https://t.co/518RAEgrgq

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

In celebration of #TeacherAppreciationWeek, West High junior Colin Wehrle is honoring Sara Whittaker. “I really wouldn’t be in the position I am in now without her. She supports students while creating this culture of kindness that is so important to everyone at West High.”

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

Congrats to West High senior Catherine Xu on earning a gold medal at the European Girls’ Math Olympiad in France! Representing Team USA, Catherine ranked among the top 8% of competitors from 67 countries and achieved one of the highest scores on the U.S. team.

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

Congratulations to West High's Collin Wehrle on being named Iowa’s Free Spirit Scholarship winner by the Freedom Forum! Collin is one of 50 students nationwide chosen and will attend an all-expenses-paid trip to Washington, D.C., along with receiving a $1,000 college scholarship.

[West Side Story @wsspaper]

The National Scholastic Press Association recognized the nation’s top scholastic websites April 18, announcing https://t.co/eb0fENkHhy as one of 16 winners nationwide in its annual Pacemaker competition.

https://t.co/rDgiHzpEfO

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

Huge congrats to West High Principal Mitch Gross on receiving the Principal of the Year Award at the @National Association of Secondary School Principals Conference in Washington, D.C., during the National Education Leadership Awards Ceremony!

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

Congrats to West High's WSS website, https://t.co/wK1AIDlsyO, on being named an Online Pacemaker winner this past weekend! WSS was one of only 16 schools nationwide that won this year, and the only school in Iowa. Way to go, Trojans!

Read more: https://t.co/X9aQzGmb6L

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

Don't miss Theatre West's production of A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder starting tonight at 7 pm and running through Sunday, April 18th, at West High.

Buy Tickets: https://t.co/SDRuKc9kMk

April 16th @7pm
April 17th @7pm
April 18th @1pm
April 18th @7pm

[Lucas Mann @LucasWMann]

the gap between knowing what you want to say and then figuring out how to say it...*is* writing...like if you're not doing that part what part are you doing?

[Iowa Men's Basketball @IowaHoops]

One Smart Koch(ie) 😏🍪

𝙊𝙣𝙡𝙮 𝙈𝘽𝘽 𝙥𝙡𝙖𝙮𝙚𝙧 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘽𝙞𝙜 𝙏𝙚𝙣 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙖 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙛𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙂𝙋𝘼

@Jacobdkoch1212 x #Hawkeyes

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

#SchoolSocialWorkWeek Meet Sarah Nunez, our Districtwide & Twain Elementary SFA. Sarah's role helps remove barriers to everyday success, whether that’s providing academic support, addressing social-emotional needs, or connecting families with community resources.

[Iowa City Schools @IowaCitySchools]

Dr. Michael Ayers is a teacher, parent, and City High alum in his 25th year of teaching. He leads English and the AP Capstone program. “This is a special place. When you walk in and see students doing amazing things, it sells itself.”

Watch the video now: https://t.co/Ewi1tWdI4i

[Kareem Carr, Ph.D. @kareem_carr]

Thinkers don't want thoughts. They want to think. Artists don't want drawings. They want to draw. Writers don't want writings. They want to write.

The people selling AI don't seem to understand this.

[Matthew R. Kay @MattRKay]

Man, teaching is a new level of “on.”

Day, one - I ain’t even done nothing and I’m gassed 🤪