My kid’s large public in the Bay Area just announced yesterday that they will now be administering the SAT and PSAT on site and during the school day going forward, in response to the Oakland incident and other accessibility issues. Hopefully other schools and school districts will follow suit.
With the state publics being test blind and the last 4 years of both covid and wildfire issues, testing availability has been dismal these last few years. California is having to do an awfully quick pivot back into testing culture and that’s obviously going to be a problem.
My own kid (25) is still going TO but if she’d been younger by a year or two that probably wouldn’t be the case.
I still sometimes can’t wrap my head around the racket that the College Board runs on this entire country. How and why have we handed so much power over our educational outcomes to an organization that is separate from our public education system and yet administers tests that are required by many of those public institutions?
Fully agree. I personally despise the College Board and am glad that my daughter was able to get through high school without giving them a single penny.
But I know many high school students do feel the need to take AP tests and SATs based on their college plans, especially now as more selective colleges begin to again require SAT testing. It really sucks that they make this requirement then put up so many barriers to it. If it’s required, it should be accessible. And Stanford and other such colleges need to pressure the College Board to increase accessibility, imo. If they want to run the circus, they need to put up the tent.
Every spring, millions of high school students hunker down in classrooms as they prepare to take Advanced Placement exams. With the ability to award college credit at many universities with a score of three or above, AP exams — which are the…
The College Board’s CEO David Coleman was compensated over $2.5mm last year and 3 other executives earned over $1mm. The testing revenue earned (by this non profit) is over $1 billion annually.
The CB is a monopolistic business enterprise and should be compelled to treat the students as customers. This includes providing access and ensuring the exams are administered. They should as corporate leaders be expected to “multi task” for all the communities they serve.
Yes. Trying to find a spot for my older kid to take an AP test in a subject that her school didn’t teach and therefore didn’t offer on-site was literally a Kafkaesque descent into hell.
And CB is comprised of educators themselves, both at the HS level and college. If it didn’t fulfill a need, it wouldn’t exist. There are thousands of test blind or test optional colleges from which to choose.
Agree. Stanford (and likely USC and Pomona in the future) will have to figure it out. Perhaps they can band together to purchase time at local community colleges or Cal States to host/proctor the exam?
Of course it fills a need. But that doesn’t mean it fills it perfectly and with our huge country and all its disparate systems, it seems wonky to me that the CB wields so much influence.
There’s a reason the top high schools in the country have weaned themselves off AP exams over the last decade or so.
For a huge system like UC or CSU, a proprietary entrance exam seems like a much more appropriate and effective method. I realize it’s a bureaucratic hurdle, but in an ideal world I think it would serve students much better. For now, hopefully CA high schools will start stepping up for their students and providing more testing opps. Parent obviously should be pushing for this, as they did in my district.
Not surprisingly, there are few nonprofits ( or even for profit) companies or schools who wish to get into the admissions testing business. Even with the current flaws, tens of millions of kids in the US manage to test, fortunately. Individual school tests are extraordinarily inefficient.
That’s not the law. Perhaps the author of the OpEd should write their Congressperson.
Disagree. California dropped testing bcos it resulted in disparate outcomes. As UC found out/knew, it is impossible to develop a test that would do otherwise, given the K12 issues and differential backgrounds of the entering K12 students.
I think CCs and CSUs could be good potential locations. But shouldn’t the College Board be responsible for making and paying for these arrangements? Isn’t that why students pay a fee to take the test? Where does the fee go? Not to space rental and proctors?
perhaps you should have asked your high school administrators why this was the case; it was their choice to not offer the test. Our school gladly offered tests in any subject desired. It really isn’t hard to do so.
You raise good questions, for which I have no idea. I woudl guess that CB does not pay high schools full costs, but that’s only a guess. Perhaps high schools offer up their sites below costs as they believe it’s good public policy and good for their own students? Now that UC/Cal States have gone test blind, offering up a test site is only good for a handful of top students, so perhaps not worth the time and effort?
btw: Our suburban HS district has never offered to host SAT/ACT tests. All of our students have had to go to adjacent cities for testing. (The argument was that not enough district teachers wanted to volunteer for the small stipend.)
“College Board reaches more than 7 million students a year, helping them navigate the path from high school to college and career. Our not-for-profit membership organization was founded more than 120 years ago. We pioneered programs like the SAT® and AP® to expand opportunities for students and help them develop the skills they need. Our BigFuture® program helps students plan for college, pay for college, and explore careers.”
OP is about students who scheduled exams, paid to sit for the exam, showed up for the exam but were not able to complete the exam because CB had subcontracted out to a hotel venue not fit for purpose.
Helping students “navigate the path” would certainly fall outside of what transpired. These students are now between a rock and a hard place.
If you want to discuss the legal obligations of non profits a separate thread should be started.
I do not know, either. That may be the case. And CCs may also be willing to offer a similar deal to the CB, but of course I don’t know. Regardless, the CB seems to have a very healthy revenue stream - perhaps some of that could be invested in making their tests more accessible to more students.
Wouldnt CB better spend its limited resources ( all resources are limited) in providing or increasing access to the less privileged? That is what fee waivers accomplish. Or it could provide testing sites in poor communities, defined by zip code, but those slots would likely go to Alabama, Mississippi and West Virginia.
Gosh it never occurred to me to do the most obvious thing ()
It actually was a test that required a language lab and was therefore a bit more complicated. But in my calls to schools all over the Bay Area to find a spot, I heard from a lot of guidance counselors and college counselors about their frustrations with the system. It was interesting. In the end, after a month of stressing out to finally find a testing spot, my daughter wound up taking the test over her iPhone (literally!) because it was spring 2020. Couldn’t even use a computer because of the oral requirement.
So your high school let you down? They didnt want to bother? They offer no language lab?
High schools do vary greatly. I wish ours still offered more languages.
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