We Don’t Need the College Board
I think it is appropriate to start by establishing that I am not a neutral party when it comes to the College Board. I have serially gone on the record as a critic of the organization. In particular, I have been outspoken about inequity in Advanced Placement (AP) course design and exams practices that don’t put students or sound pedagogy first (see: here, here, here).
At the same time, I have been an advocate to remove barriers to AP classes faced by low-income students and students of color. I have taught AP US Government & Politics for a decade. I have also taught AP Human Geography and AP Comparative Government & Politics long enough that I have the course articulations (the outline from which both my instruction and the external assessment are designed) largely committed to memory. I believe there’s a place for dual-credit programs in high schools, but that the College Board is a terrible vehicle to deliver them. I guess what I am saying here is that I approach what follows in an informed, clear-eyed manner with over a decade of experience teaching AP classes in both the United States and overseas.
When I initially sat down to think through this article, I intended to write a polemic piece. I originally pitched the title “The College Board: &%@^$*!#" to TG2. While there’s much to rant about with the organization (I’m currently dealing with their awful website—easily the worst of any organization I interact with regularly), I decided to focus instead on systemic issues and to offer an alternative model.
A Brief History
The College Board was established in 1899, then called the College Entrance Examination Board. Their stated purpose was to “bring order” to the wild-west of the college admission process, by ranking and sorting students based on exam scores. Of course, they would be the ones to create these exams, thereby cementing their role as the gatekeepers to higher education in the US. The founding members of the College Board included representatives from Ivy League schools and elite institutions on the east coast like Johns Hopkins, as well as their collaborators in highly-selective secondary schools. They saw the need for a standardized admissions test that would provide a “fair” and “objective” way to evaluate (white male, remember America in 1899) students' abilities and readiness for college.
In 1901, the first College Board exams were administered in nine subjects, including Latin, French, German, English, History, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. Over time, the College Board has expanded to offer a range of programs and services, including the SAT, PSAT, pre-AP classes, and an ocean of exam prep materials for their suite of exams. Jeremy Williams, a school leader from Indiana, refers to the College Board as the “Big Tobacco of Education.” I think that framing is instructive to keep in mind.
The College Board is a testing cartel
The word cartel may seem extreme and bring to mind visions of Netflix’s Narcos or figures like Pablo Escobar and El Chapo. But let’s actually look at the definition of the word: “Cartel. noun. an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition.” That is exactly what the College Board does. They have a stranglehold on testing in the US. Next month, over one million students will take AP exams. They will pay $97 and students overseas will pay $127, per exam. Speaking of overseas students, it's worth noting the International Baccalaureate (IB) program is no better. It's just international Pepsi to the College Board's Coke. Through their lobbying, ubiquitous marketing to teachers and school leaders at education conferences, and influence peddling, they have largely cornered the market in assessments and increasingly in college preparatory curriculum. Despite being a “not-for-profit” entity, the College Board reported over $1.1 billion in revenue in 2019. To wit, the head of the cartel, David Coleman, made a staggering $2,562,624 in 2020 (the most recent year data is available).
The College Board's pricing strategy disproportionately affects low-income students who cannot afford to pay hundreds of dollars for exams. This means the College Board is perpetuating a system that favors the wealthy and privileged. To add insult to injury, the College Board has spawned an entire industry around test preparation, with study materials, and courses that are priced beyond the reach of many families. For example, PrepScholar’s SAT reviews start at $397 and peak north of $1000. Or PrepExpert’s whose materials start at $999 and soar up to $2999. The College Board creates a two-tiered system where wealthy students have access to better resources and are more likely to score well on exams, while low-income students are left behind.
A better model—federalization
The College Board is an accident of history. Their middleman role is unparalleled in most similar countries. If we were designing the system from scratch, this function would be served by a federal agency, a series of agencies across the states, or some combination of the above.
Listen, no one intentionally planned our grueling eighteen-month Presidential elections. That process, like many institutions in the US, are accidents of history rather than the result of intentional planning. Consider our employer-based health care system. It’s an unintended consequence of domestic policy in World War II. During the war, the federal government imposed wage controls which made it difficult for employers to attract workers by offering higher salaries. To compete, many companies began offering health insurance as a benefit. This became more popular in the post-war period as labor unions began negotiating health benefits as part of collective bargaining agreements. The rest is history.
In the past, I proposed a nationalization, the federal government taking over the organization and making it essentially a federal agency. But the DeVos era of stewardship of the Department of Education showed me the shortcoming of this line of thinking. Education is treated constitutionally as a reserved power, one delegated to the states in the US system. States operate K-12 schools and public universities. States are fully capable of determining what coursework and levels of achievement are worthy of college credit. Universities recognize high school diplomas from other states. Universities grant credit transfer from other states. The introduction of a third party in the mix, skimming a billion dollars per year, does more harm than it does good. Many states already offer dual credit programs that are more equitable than the offerings from the College Board, Montana’s system being one of the most successful.
States don’t need the College Board—the College Board needs states.
For what it’s worth, I am not wedded to a federalized model but I am fiercely committed to the idea that we must displace the College Board from its role. You don’t have to like or agree with my prescription but I hope we can agree on the diagnosis: the College Board drains literally billions of dollars from families and school districts across the United States. And its exams function as gatekeepers to marginalized communities that would be much better off without it. The sooner we come to grips with that, the sooner we can collectively decide if we want the power they have to remain in their hands.
I believe the answer is an unqualified “no”.
Nate Bowling teaches Social Studies at a US Embassy School in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. He is a past Washington State Teacher of the Year and National Teacher of the Year Finalist. He and his wife blog about living and teaching overseas at BowlingsAbroad.com and he is the host of the Nerd Farmer Podcast on the Channel 253 Podcast Network. He writes a weekly newsletter called Takes & Typos on Subtack and you can find him on Mastodon’s Scholar.Social as @natebowling.