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What's Changing in AP Statistics for the 26-27 School Year?

  • Writer: Math Medic
    Math Medic
  • 5 hours ago
  • 2 min read

Last year, the College Board released a draft of a new course framework for AP Statistics. This included fewer units in a different order, replaced course skills with course practices, removed several topics, and added a new learning objective of investigating a statistical question. After soliciting feedback from Statistics teachers (we got Type I and Type II errors back, baby!), College Board has released the Revised Course Framework Preview along with some MAJOR changes to the AP Statistics Exam, to take place in the 26-27 school year.


How is the AP Exam Changing?

The new AP Statistics Exam will be given in May 2027 (not next school year) with the following changes:


Multiple-Choice

  • 42 questions (instead of 40)

  • 4 answer choices (did we really need that fifth answer choice anyway?)


Free-Response

  • 4 questions:

    • One FRQ focused on Practice 1: Formulate Questions and Practice 2: Collect Data

    • One FRQ focused on Practice 3: Analyzing Data and Practice 4: Interpret Results

    • One FRQ focused on inference skills associated with Practices 2-4.

    • One FRQ focused on Practices 2-4 and multiple content areas from AP Statistics.

  • 10 points apiece (are we saying goodbye to E, P, I and holistic scoring?!)


What is in the Revised Course Framework?

Fewer Units and a Different Order

The current CED has 9 Units. The new Course Framework is condensed to only 5 units. The guiding philosophy here is that reducing the amount of content that needs to be covered will allow teachers to go more in-depth into each topic. Here is a quick correlation guide.


Course Skills are Being Replaced by Statistical Practices

In the current CED, there are four course skills categories (Selecting Statistical Methods, Data Analysis, Using Probability and Simulation, and Statistical Argumentation). In the revised course framework, there are four statistical practices (Formulate Questions, Collect Data, Analyze Data, Interpret Results). The four statistical practices come directly from the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education (GAISE), a framework for Statistics education proposed by the American Statistical Association.


What Content Has Been Removed?

Our first glance through the revised course framework gives evidence to the "less is more" approach. Here are the topics that have been removed:

  • Outliers, high-leverage points, and influential points

  • Analyzing departures from linearity

  • Geometric distributions

  • Combining random variables

  • Chi-square goodness-of-fit test

  • Inference for slope

What Content Has Been Added?

There is not a lot to report here, but we did find one Learning Objective that seems to be a new one:

  • Determine an investigative question within a statistical study. (1.1.B)


Will Math Medic Make Adjustments?

Of course! You know we got your backs. We will stay on top of all the changes as they happen, and you can be sure that we will have perfectly aligned lessons along with homework and assessments ready to go for the 2026-2027 school year! (We've already started strategizing about which answer choice we'll delete from each of the thousands of MC in our MMAP Question Bank 😅.)

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