Interviews with more than 75 people expose the deep problems threatening the College Board’s billion-dollar testing monopoly. The great-granddaddy of standardized tests may not survive.
account for a substantial portion of the $406 million in 2018 revenue collected by the College Board’s Assessments division, which includes the SAT and PSAT programs. The biggest moneymaker for the nonprofit is its Advanced Placement program, housed inside a division that accounted for $483 million in revenue in 2018.
The College Board benefits from economies of scale in the most popular subjects, including AP U.S. History and AP English Language and Composition. Gross margins for the AP division overall are 29%, but some tests have margins well over 50%, say former employees. The AP program has grown exponentially since 1955 when the College Board took it over. It has almost no competitors and few critics. Its expansion is a lesson in masterful product marketing. Originally backed by the Ford Foundation, the idea was to give challenging work to a small group of high-achieving students. “It was a very elitist program at its inception,” says Kristin Klopfenstein, an economist who spent 12 years studying the program., based on the true story of devoted East Los Angeles AP Calculus teacher Jaime Escalante, whose low-income Latino students all passed their exams, gave a huge boost to the program in the public imagination. The College Board ran with it, pushing AP courses for all without considering the resources underfunded school districts would need to help students succeed. “They were trying to make the AP into something it wasn’t designed to be,” Klopfenstein says. For years there were only 11 AP courses offered in core subjects like chemistry, physics and history. The curriculum was college-level, and high scorers could sometimes receive college credit or placement. How do you expand the market when a product is in high demand? Give customers variety. Just as General Motors offers 20 different models of SUV, today there are nearlyin topics ranging from art history and human geography to psychology and drawing. Demand for AP Computer Science, for example, was so brisk that in 2017 College Board ginned up an easier variation called Computer Science Principles, which is one of its fastest-growing products. Last year 96,000 Principles AP exams were given, compared to 70,000 Java coding-heavy Computer Science A exams. According to College Board’s data, from 2005 to 2008, 496,000 students took three or more AP exams. A decade later that number had more than doubled, to 1.1 million.. AP exams cost $95 each. There’s a $40 late fee for missing the November registration deadline, and those who register, pay and then cancel get only $45 back. To send scores to more than one school or to submit scores late, College Board charges $15 per score report. Similar to their performance on the SAT, Black and brown students don’t do as well on AP tests as white students. According to the College Board’s own, in 2019, 68% of Black and 56% of Latino students who took an AP test did not earn a passing score of 3 or higher on the exam’s five-point scale. The failure rate for all students was 41%. Despite the disappointing stats, the College Board has lobbied states to support its highly profitable AP program, promoting it as a way to elevate American high school curricula and carry out the College Board’s mission of connecting students with college success. A high school’s AP program is an importantof its perceived quality. And the number of AP courses on a student’s high school transcript is one of the most heavily weighted measures college admissions officers use to evaluate applicants. Many states now subsidize the exams and require that AP participation or scores be used to measure school and district performance. Last year more than 5 million AP exams were given inabout the College Board’s current woes is that its management has yet to come up with an adequate plan to administer its tests safely and efficiently during the pandemic. It managed to offer virtual AP exams in the spring. But widely reported technical problems prompted a $500 million federal class actionThe nonprofit has the financial resources to address its problems. Its most recent publicly available balance sheet shows that it operates with more than $300 million in cash and savings and nearly $850 million in investments. Brainpower isn’t an issue either. Its executive suite is deep, well-credentialed and lavishly paid. Only one of its 18 listed officers made less than $300,000 in 2018. Eleven, including the chief of “membership, governance and global higher ed,” earned more than $500,000. In late May, the University of California system announced it would stop considering test scores entirely starting in 2023, and a judge recently ruled that policy must be implemented immediately.College Board’s inept management of the SAT during the pandemic could have long-term consequences. Former College Board executives and close outside observers point to the demise of the SAT Subject Tests as an object lesson. These single-subject tests in disciplines like chemistry and math doubled down on AP’s success formula but were mortally wounded in 2012 when the University of California system stopped requiring the exams. Hundreds of other colleges followed UC’s lead. Data from the College Board show that the number of subject tests taken in 2017 had fallen by nearly 300,000 since 2011. Many think California’s recent actions mark the beginning of the end of the iconic SAT. “UC’s decision was huge,” says, new head of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, an organization with 14,000 members. “It’s only a matter of time before other public systems follow suit.” Pérez’s previous job was head of enrollment at Trinity College, a private liberal arts school in Hartford, Connecticut, that stopped requiring tests in 2015. His prediction about schools that have switched to test-optional policies during the pandemic: “They’re going to learn how to do admissions without the tests.” Even for several members of the Ivy League, the SAT has become an unintended liability. The recent anti-affirmative action
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