The College Board

I keep thinking that the College Board’s influence will decline as the factory model of education declines.  When high schools are doing interesting, innovative, developmentally appropriate things that allow students lots of room for creativity, surely bubble tests will not seem like valid measures of… whatever they purport to measure.

“Sell your stock in the College Board” is a convenient way to express the idea that such change is imminent, but it turns out not to be applicable.  The College Board is nonprofit; nobody owns stock in it.  Its earnings go into executive salaries of $500,000+, and it carries over an impressive annual “excess” in the $50 million range.  Here’s an article that explains its finances in some detail.

The upshot is that individuals can’t do much to change the testing racket.  Only schools and colleges can decide not to support it.