College Board is Evil and Here's Why

Ah, the SAT. Just the thought of this evil little acronym can cause long-forgotten feelings of anxiety and trauma to come bubbling to the surface. When we were in high school, we were told that it was this that would guarantee our place in college, and by proxy, the world. Hours were spent with SAT prep books and flash cards so that we could master the test before we even got to it. It was all.....well, sort of stupid.

An arbitrary examination of our ability to cram shit into our heads, the SAT has been a fairly bad representation of students' abilities for years, and people have taken notice. Back in 2012, the ACT surpassed the SAT in the number of students who took the test. Not to be outdone, College Board, the corporation that administers the exam, has decided to revamp the SAT.  No one apparently told College Board, however, that revamping does not mean "make worse." In a "brilliant" decision by the company's president and serial douche (we'll get to this), David Coleman, the essay portion of the SAT has been removed and many of the vocabulary sections have been altered to be easier. The test, formerly on a 2400 point scale will return to its iconic 1600 point scale.

On the surface, this seems like a harmless, dare I say good, change to the out-of-date test. After all, shifting the way we educate can only be better at this point right? That is, it would be if David Coleman wasn't on a war path to remove creativity and opinion from the class room. Allow me to explain.

David Coleman was elected president of College Board in 2012. Since his rise to power, he has espoused the idea of the "common core standard." Coleman's belief is that the answer to improving education in the country is to create a standardized curriculum through which all students can go through and come out on the other side better off. Anyone who has set foot in a high school or elementary school classroom in the past ten years will almost certainly find this belief as hilariously out of touch as it sounds. Maybe it's because Coleman, someone who has never taught in a K-12 school, isn't looking out for the best interests of the nation's children, but for the interests of himself and the profits generated by the SAT.

Students weren't taking the SAT because the preparation was brutal so Coleman made it easier. This wasn't some attempt to make the test more "accessible;" it's a scrambling attempt to remain relevant and keep his customers. Because, at its very core, College Board is a business. Sure, it passes itself off as a "nonprofit organization" but its worth noting that Gaston Caperton, the man who preceded Coleman, received flak for his outrageous salary of $1.3 million back in 2011. In an effort to distance himself from the allegations of irresponsible spending, Coleman took on a base salary of "only" $550,000, "with total compensation of nearly $750,000."  Truly, he is a man of the people.

His scumbaggery aside, Coleman has come under fire from progressive leaning groups for his fixation on informational texts as opposed to fiction, citing that writing opinion pieces and creative writing will serve no one in the real world. He gave a speech (which received a tidal wave of backlash from educators) in which he mocked the idea of creative writing, saying that it would be rare to hear someone say, "Johnson, I need a market analysis by Friday, but before that I need a compelling account of your childhood.” Because we are so often faced with every day problems that require explicit knowledge of geometry and the scientific method.  By this logic, the only thing we should be teaching in schools is mindless drone work for an evil nonprofit that will eventually screw your kids. On that topic...

AP classes aren't working. Another scam run by College Board, reports are showing that Advanced Placement courses and exams are wasted investments. The classes, notorious for "teaching the test" and lying about being valid representations of college courses, are demonstrating that they are very bad at preparing students for the AP exams. The number of students bombing the exam has steadily risen over the past several years.

Photo courtesy of POLITICO

With these kinds of statistics, why would any school in its right mind ever offer them? Because money, of course. According to Politico, at least a dozen states give incentives to offer AP classes. Some states are even offering schools extra funds for things like textbooks and teacher training if they offer AP. College Board is effectively lobbying and forcing schools into their system by offering up a carrot and waiting for underfunded education programs to bite. By offering these classes and exams to lower income and minority students, College Board makes itself look like the knight in white armor, ignoring the fact that "many of those students lack the academic background they need to excel in a college-level course." Indeed,  African American students passed only 27 percent of the AP exams they took in 2012. Hispanics passed only 41 percent. 

So, how is all of this relevant to College Board's decision to remove the essay portion? It's indicative of a watering down of education into a convenient set of standards dictated by a man who has never set foot in the classroom. In a time where the nation is lagging behind in every major educational subject, it should be imperative to shift the way we teach in the classroom. This doesn't mean striking down creative writing and the generation of opinions in favor of mindless repetition. It means fostering an environment of desired learning and attempting to garner interest in a generation that desperately needs it. Yes, we are a distracted group of entitled little shits, but that's because we've been subjected to an awful, profit-oriented system of learning churned out by a corporation that masquerades as a nonprofit.

I don't know how to improve the nation's education and I don't have the credentials to really give my opinion anyways. But I don't think a corporate drone should have a say in the matter either. We've already taken the SAT and gone through the system, but we can ensure that generations after us get a quality education if we just raise awareness about clowns like David Coleman and Gaston Caperton and topple the charade that is the SAT and AP classes.