Each committee is made up of seven members who meet twice a year. The members who represent the AP Program are either current or recent members of an AP Development Committee.

Content Experts
Two or more content experts from ETS work closely with each AP Development Committee. Most content experts hold advanced degrees in the relevant field and, typically, have been college or high school teachers of the subject before joining the ETS staff. They combine subject-matter expertise with knowledge of measurement principles as they work with committee members in developing AP courses and exams. By participating in professional associations and various other professional development activities, they remain current in their respective fields.

Content experts provide committee members with access to ETS resources and services, such as staff with special expertise in measurement and statistics, publications, research, or questionnaire design. They support and coordinate various committee activities, such as reviewing new questions and test forms as well as publications such as Course Descriptions and Teacher's Guides. (For more information on these publications, visit the College Board Store).
  The College Board Store

Chief Readers
The Chief Reader (CR) in each subject is appointed by ETS and the College Board for a four-year term, after extensive experience in the Reading hierarchy (Reader, Table Leader, etc.), and after one year of training under the previous CR as a CR Designate. All CRs teach at colleges or universities. The CR's responsibilities include:

• Supervise the scoring of the free-response section of the exam. This includes selecting the other Readers, developing scoring standards for free-response questions, overseeing the entire scoring process when the student papers are graded at the AP Reading, and determining the scale for converting raw scores into AP grades.
• Contribute to the Development Committee's activities. He or she attends each committee meeting and provides a comprehensive critique of the free-response sections under development, with a special focus on characteristics that will affect the scoring of the questions.
• Communicate to the committee how the students responded to and performed on the free-response portions of the exams. This typically includes a discussion of whether the various questions resulted in a distribution of student scores along the entire range of the score scale being used, a discussion of the relative strengths and weaknesses displayed by the student group as a whole, and specific suggestions for the development of future free-response questions. This evaluation also includes the other Readers' reactions to the free-response questions at the AP Reading.

AP Development Committees
AP Development Committees are the authority when it comes to making subject-matter decisions in the test construction process. Most committees have six or seven members, representing a variety of types of secondary schools and colleges from all regions of the country. As faculty members, they know the abilities and skills that are critical to mastery in a given subject, and how students can demonstrate them.

Committee members work closely with ETS's content experts in planning, developing, and approving each AP Exam. They attend several committee meetings each year, where they review content and review specifications for the exams, write exam questions, review exams in draft form, and assist in writing informational materials for AP students, schools, and colleges.

To learn more about the roles and responsibilities of Development Committee members, refer to the Exam Development Committees page.   Exam Development Committees

AP Readers
The people who score the free-response sections of AP Exams are known as "Readers." They are experienced teachers of either the relevant AP course in a high school or the equivalent course at a college or university.

Approximately 9,000 Readers come together each June for the AP Reading. Great care is taken to make sure that the group is balanced; among the factors considered before appointing someone to the role are school locale and setting, gender, ethnicity, and years of teaching experience.
  Become an AP Exam Reader

Question and Exam Leaders
Appointed by the Chief Reader, Question and Exam Leaders have generally served for several years as Table Leaders. In large volume subjects, a Question Leader supervises the Readers' scoring of a particular free-response question. In some subjects with two exams, an exam leader supervises the scoring of one of the exams.

ETS Statisticians
Statisticians at ETS are involved in all stages of the AP Exams. Here are some of their responsibilities:

• Analyzing item and test data to ensure that each AP Exam meets the necessary specifications for quality, such as item fairness, high score reliability, and consistent grading standards.
• Assisting in the establishment of grading standards via college comparability studies.
• Engaging in score equating studies that ensure that standards are maintained across years.
• Preparing statistical reports for AP Development Committees and documenting the statistical properties of tests and scores.
• Performing research aimed at improving measurement practices and procedures.

• Exam development staff, by helping to ensure that the exams are built to statistical specifications, and indicating when data suggests that an item should be excluded from counting toward the total score.
• Chief Readers, by providing statistically-based recommendations for grade setting, and assisting them in using these data to set grades.
• AP Program Direction staff at ETS and the College Board, by giving advice about sound statistical and psychometric practices related to AP grades and their use.