AP® History Exams Are Changing in 2027

For AP history teachers, curriculum changes often bring a mixture of curiosity and concern. Fortunately, the College Board's updates to the AP European History, AP United States History, and AP World History: Modern exams, beginning in May 2027, are less about changing what we teach and more about improving how students demonstrate their historical thinking.

The good news is that the content framework, historical thinking skills, multiple-choice section, and free-response scoring rubrics remain the same. If you've built a strong course centered on evidence, historical reasoning, and argumentation, you’re doing much of the work your students need already.

Still, there are several meaningful changes that will influence how we structure classroom instruction throughout the year.

Every Short-Answer Question Now Includes a Source

Perhaps the most significant instructional shift is the redesign of the Short-Answer Questions (SAQs). Previously, some SAQs were stimulus-based while others relied entirely on student recall. Beginning in 2027, every SAQ will include source material.

Students will complete three required SAQs:

• One based on one or more secondary text sources
• One based on a primary text source
• One based on a primary or secondary non-text source, such as a political cartoon, map, graph, image, or chart

Additionally, each SAQ will come from a different historical period.

This change reflects something many AP teachers have long believed: historical thinking begins with analyzing evidence. Rather than asking students to simply remember information, the exam now consistently asks them to interpret, evaluate, and apply historical knowledge using sources. Giving students historical context will allow them to create historical analysis through a synthesis of sources.

What This Means for Instruction

Teachers should begin embedding sources into everyday warm-ups, exit tickets, quizzes, and discussions. Students should become comfortable analyzing a short excerpt or visual source before answering concise historical questions.

This does not require lengthy document analysis. In fact, the best preparation may involve frequent five-minute activities where students practice reading a source, identifying its historical significance, and answering three brief prompts.

Students also need regular exposure to both primary and secondary sources. Many classrooms emphasize primary documents, but historians constantly interpret the past through secondary scholarship as well. Helping students distinguish between historical evidence and historical interpretation becomes even more important. One entry point to consider is the need for and role of historiography as it helps to remind students that history is an interpretive discipline.

Finally, we should intentionally incorporate more visual sources throughout the year. Political cartoons, propaganda posters, demographic graphs, maps, artwork, photographs, and infographics should become regular instructional tools rather than occasional supplements

The Long Essay Question Prioritizes Historical Thinking

The LEQ also receives an important update.

Rather than selecting from multiple prompts, students will respond to one broad prompt that includes a short introductory statement designed to orient them toward the task and suggest possible avenues for analysis.

Importantly, the scoring rubric remains unchanged.

Students still need to:

• Develop a historically defensible thesis
• Provide relevant contextualization
• Support their argument with specific historical evidence
• Demonstrate complex historical understanding
• The expectations have not become easier or harder. Instead, they have become clearer.

Helping Students Prepare

Many teachers already focus heavily on formulaic essay writing. These changes provide an opportunity to move beyond templates.

Students should practice interpreting broad historical questions and making meaningful decisions about which evidence best supports their argument. Rather than asking, "Which prompt should I choose?," students will ask, "What is the strongest argument I can make?"

This subtle shift places greater emphasis on historical judgment rather than strategic test taking.

Teachers can prepare students by assigning broad essential questions throughout the year:

• To what extent did reform movements transform American society?
• How did industrialization reshape political and economic systems?
• What factors most influenced the development of democracy?

These types of questions mirror the kind of thinking students will now encounter on the exam.

The DBQ Encourages Deeper Course Connections

The Document-Based Question also expands its chronological range. Rather than drawing primarily from a narrower historical window, the DBQ now allows students to use evidence from across the course when constructing their argument. This is an exciting change because it better reflects authentic historical thinking. Historians naturally connect events across decades and even centuries. They compare, trace continuity and change, identify long-term developments, and explain historical causation over extended periods of time. The narrowness of Periods, at least for the DBQ, has been replaced by a more meaningful exercise.

Classroom Implications

Instead of treating each unit as a self-contained chapter, teachers should intentionally revisit earlier content throughout the year. Simple strategies can make a significant difference:

• Ask students to connect new content to previous units.
• Revisit earlier themes through retrieval practice.
• Use cumulative writing assignments.
• Build review activities that emphasize historical continuity and comparison.

Students who regularly make these long-term connections will be better positioned to earn evidence points on the revised DBQ.

A Welcome Evolution

Overall, these revisions represent an evolution rather than a revolution. The College Board® appears to be rewarding authentic historical thinking over memorization and encouraging greater consistency across the free-response section. For teachers, the best response is not to redesign an entire curriculum but to make thoughtful adjustments throughout the year. Increase students' exposure to diverse historical sources. Build more opportunities for source analysis into everyday lessons. Encourage broader historical connections. Continue emphasizing strong historical writing grounded in evidence. If we do those things consistently, our students won't simply be prepared for the 2027 exam; they'll become stronger historians. And ultimately, that's a change worth embracing.

Pat Sprinkle is a 18th year history teacher at the NYC Lab School for Collaborative Studies, teaching AP® U.S. History and AP U.S. Government and Politics. Pat is a graduate of The Ohio State University and Columbia University. Pat has served as a member of the Teacher Advisory Council for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, National Humanities Center, and the National Constitution Center. In addition, Pat was a 2013 James Madison Fellow along with a 2021 C-SPAN Fellow. Pat lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, with his wife, son (Franklin), and dog (Lyndon).