College Board

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The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association in the United States that was formed in 1900 as the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB). It is composed of more than 5,700 schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations. It manages many different standardized tests used by academically oriented post-secondary education institutions to measure a student's ability. The SAT, the most well-known of these, along with the ACT, is a test widely used for admission to universities in the United States. The College Board is headquartered in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City.^[1] The current president and CEO of the College Board is Gaston Caperton, the former governor of West Virginia.

In addition to managing tests, the College Board works with programs that claim to increase achievement by poor and minority middle and high school students. Funded by grants from various foundations, such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the College Board Schools operate autonomously within New York City public school buildings. A similar program named EXCELerator began a pilot program for the 2006–2007 school year at 11 schools in Washington, DC, Jacksonville/Duval County, FL, and Chicago Public Schools.^[2] Both of these school reform programs use the SpringBoard and CollegeEd materials as part of their programs.

College Board headquarters in New York

CEEB Code

The College Board maintains a numbered registry of countries, college majors, colleges, scholarship programs, test centers, and high schools. In the United States, in addition to the College Board's internal use this registry is borrowed by other institutions as a means of unambiguous identification; thus, a student might give his or her guidance department not only a college's name and address, but also its CEEB code, to ensure that his or her transcript is sent correctly. There exists a similar set of ACT codes for colleges and scholarships [1], test centers [2], and high schools [3], however these codes are less widely used outside ACT, Inc.

College Board Tests

SAT

The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is administered by the College Board corporation in the United States and is developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). SAT Subject Tests are said to measure student performance in specific areas, such as mathematics, science, and history.

PSAT/NMSQT

PSAT/NMSQT stands for Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. It's a standardized test that provides firsthand practice for the SAT Reasoning Test. It also functions as a qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarship Corporation scholarship programs.

College Level Examination Program

College Level Examination Program provides students of any age with the opportunity to demonstrate college-level achievement through a program of exams in undergraduate college courses. Critics of the Advanced Placement Program charge that courses and exams focus on breadth of content coverage instead of depth, and that students learn almost exclusively about the US or Western Europe. Advance Placement exams, along the International Baccalaureate exams, often receive advanced standing for top scores on AP or IB exams. There are 2,900 colleges that grant credit and/or advanced standing.

Advanced Placement Program

The College Board's Advanced Placement Program is an extensive program that offers high school students the chance to participate in what they describe as college level classes, reportedly broadening their intellectual horizons and preparing them for college work. It also plays a large part in the college admissions process, showing both student's intellectual capacity and genuine interest in learning. The program allows many students to gain college credit for high performance on the AP exams, much in the same manner as the CLEP. Granting credit however, is still at the discretion of the college.

CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE

The College Board also offers the CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE, a financial aid application service that many institutions use in determining family contribution and financial assistance packages.

As of October 31, the site is currently having difficulties with its server being able to handle user requests trying to log in into the application.

Criticism

Since at least the late 1970s, the College Board has been subject to criticism from students, educators, and consumer rights activists. The criticism comes with respect to two different areas. Some believe^[who?] the College Board is a monopoly, because for the most part, students must take AP and SAT exams to have a shot at entering competitive colleges. Although the ACT is available as an alternative to the SAT for some schools, students still must take SAT subject tests. Thus, it is almost impossible for a college-bound student to avoid paying money to The College Board. Many colleges require students submit a College Board "CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE" when applying for financial aid, again forcing students to pay money to The College Board with no other options.

Additionally, critics claim the College Board is a self-confirming system, with little regard for external evaluation. AP scores help determine college entrance, scores are based on US/Western European course content with an emphasis on multiple choice exams, and high school success is determined by AP scores and college acceptances.

Consumer rights organization Americans for Educational Testing Reform (AETR) has criticized College Board for violating its non-profit status through excessive profits and exorbitant executive compensation. AETR also claims that College Board is acting unethically by selling test preparation materials, directly lobbying legislators and government officials, and refusing to acknowledge test-taker rights^[3].

The Better Business Bureau gives the College Board a rating of F (the lowest possible).^[4]

Cost

The SAT Reasoning Test costs $45, the AP Tests cost US $86 (2009 administration),^[5] and the SAT Subject Tests cost a baseline of $20 with additional tests costing $9. Some feel the testing fees can be prohibitive for many individuals. Furthermore, there are numerous other costs that can be added to the basic costs, including late registration, rescoring, and various answering services that are available. SAT grade reports cost $9.50 per college for 3-5 week delivery ($26.50 extra for 2 day delivery), and AP grade reports cost $15. In addition, due to the competitive nature of the test, many students find it necessary to take preparatory courses or to have SAT tutoring, which can cost hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dollars. Even the College Board's College Scholarship Service Profile (CSS), a college financial aid application meant to help students pay for college, requires a fee. For the 2008-09 school year, the price is $25 for the first report sent, and an additional $16 for each additional college to receive the information.

Critics claim that these fees are unjustified for a nonprofit organization whose CEO makes $830,832 per year.^[6]

12 of its executives make more than $300,000 per year. ^[7]

In 2006—the College Board had $582.9 million of revenue, but spent only $527.8 million. That leaves a $55.1 million surplus.^[8]

MIT Study

In 2005, MIT Writing Director Les Perelman plotted essay length versus essay score on the new SAT from released essays and found a high correlation between them. After studying 23 graded essays he found that the longer the essay was the higher the score. He found that he could, with perfect accuracy, determine the score of an essay without even reading the essay. He also discovered that several of these essays were full of factual errors, although the College Board does not claim to grade for factual accuracy.

Perelman, along with the National Council of Teachers of English also criticized the 25-minute writing section of the test for damaging standards writing teaching in the classroom. They say that writing teachers training their students for the SAT will not focus on revision, depth, accuracy, but will instead produce long, formulaic, and wordy pieces.^[9] "You're getting teachers to train students to be bad writers," concluded Perelman.^[10]

AP Classes

Some, such as many school teachers have criticized AP classes as restrictive in the nature of their curriculum, and, unfortunately indisposable, due to the importance of AP classes in the college admissions process. Effectively the College Board is able to control every aspect of AP classes directly or indirectly which some have labeled "fascist" or "dictatorial". The $86 fee, which is noted in criticism above, results only in a score report with the test name and grade. No details are given on how this scoring was reached, nor are individuals given access to this information from College Board.

Reporting Errors

In March 2006, it was discovered that the College Board had mis-scored several thousand tests taken in October 2005. Although the Board was aware of the error as early as December, they waited months to respond, and in late March, schools still did not have correct details. Within days of the first announcement, the Board corrected upward the number of affected students.[4][5] Many colleges use the SAT score to decide acceptance and scholarships. The late reporting of errors upset many high-profile colleges, the dean of admissions at Pomona College commented, "Everybody appears to be telling half-truths, and that erodes confidence in the College Board… It looks like they hired the people who used to do the books for Enron." ^[11]

Front door of Manhattan HQ in a former Kent Automatic Garages building

See also

• ACT a test by ACT, Inc., the main competitor to the College Board's SAT
• IB Diploma Programme, a pre-university educational program administered by the International Baccalaureate, the main competitor to the College Board's AP Program

External links

• College Board website
• About the College Board
• The College Board's tests
• History of the College Board

References

1. ^ "Contact Us." College Board. Retrieved on May 29, 2009.
2. ^ "New Investment Broadens College Board's National Education Reform Efforts to Ensure More Students Graduate Ready for College and Work". 2006-08-31. http://www.collegeboard.com/press/releases/150224.html. Retrieved 2006-11-18. 
3. ^ http://www.aetr.org/college-board.php
4. ^ http://www.bbb.org/new-jersey/business-reviews/foundations-education-philanthropy-research/college-board-in-princeton-nj-23001265
5. ^ http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/cal_fees.html
6. ^ http://www.aetr.org/college-board.php
7. ^ http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2009/09/01/educating-america-the-big-business-of-the-sat/
8. ^ http://philosophyofscienceportal.blogspot.com/2009/05/college-boardnonprofit.html
9. ^ MICHAEL WINERIP (May 4, 2005). "SAT Essay Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/04/education/04education.html?ei=5090&en=94808505ef7bed5a&ex=1272859200&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all. 
10. ^ http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/05/17/sat/index.html
11. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/23/education/23sat.html

This article incorporates text from an edition of the New International Encyclopedia that is in the public domain.