What has changed about the way AP Exam performance levels are set?

Over the past decade, two key developments have enabled AP to use EBSS rather than smaller panels:

1. Digital data collection technologies have emerged that have made this type of quick, efficient, large-scale data collection and analysis possible. EBSS uses this new technology to collect, organize, and analyze inputs from hundreds of teachers and faculty, rather than just the experience and perspectives of 10–18 panelists. 
    
2.  Beginning in fall 2019, the AP Program provided all AP teachers with a new digital library of AP course materials—titled AP Classroom—and an accompanying course and exam description binder. This material, for the first time in the AP Program’s history, established coherent units, topics, learning objectives, and skills for each AP course that explicitly defined the parameters for assessment. This enabled a more comprehensive collection of metadata to be applied to each exam question by linking each question (and, if applicable, question part) to the skills, content, and difficulty level it was designed to measure. As a result, more granular and targeted student performance data is available for analysts to utilize in determining student abilities at basic, moderate, and exceptional levels.