AP Art and Design: Drawing Portfolios, 2021 Results
The following data reflect all 18,907 students worldwide who created and submitted AP Art and Design Drawing portfolios this year.
Note there was a significant increase in students attempting to submit plagiarized Drawing portfolios this year; students do not realize how easy it is in this day and age for the scoring processes and systems to detect nonoriginal work. Almost all of these plagiarism attempts were submitted by students from outside the United States, and all of those students’ scores are being canceled. There were similar, but much less frequent, attempts to submit non-original work in the 2-D and 3-D Portfolio categories.
Total group score distributions, 2021 vs. 2019
The following table enables comparisons of student performance in 2021 to student performance prior to the covid-19 pandemic:
| AP Score | 2019 | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | 21% | 14% |
| 4 | 33% | 38% |
| 3 | 37% | 35% |
| 2 | 8% | 12% |
| 1 | 1% | 1% |
Of these 18,907 students, 219 achieved every point possible (100 total) from every single professor, artist, and teacher who reviewed their work, an astonishing achievement.
Student performance information
As can be seen in the relatively low percentage of 1s and 2s in comparison to most AP subjects, student performance was generally strong—with little variation across each of the scoring criteria for the Sustained Investigation and the Selected Works sections.
Sustained Investigation: Across the 4 criteria, performance was quite similar, but the following slight variations may be of interest to Art and Design teachers.
- Students were most able to earn all 6 points possible on the “skills” criterion, which accounts for 20% of the Sustained Investigation score; ~17% of students earned all 6 points on this criterion.
- Students were least able to earn all 6 points possible on the “practice, experimentation, and revision” criterion, which accounts for 30% of the Sustained Investigation score; ~11% of students earned all 6 points on that criterion.
- The highest average scores on any of the 4 criteria were on the “synthesis of materials, processes, and ideas” criterion, which accounts for 30% of the Sustained Investigation score; more than 70% of students earned 4–6 points on this criterion.
Selected Works: These five selected works account for 40% of the overall AP portfolio score. Accordingly, out of the total 40 points possible for this section of the portfolio, 5% of students earned all 40 points. The average score was 26.