It develops SAT questions and administers and scores the exams. Another target: the Educational Testing Service, a Princeton, New Jersey, nonprofit founded in 1947 by the College Board and two other entities. Since the 1960s, critics have charged that the SAT confers an unfair advantage on wealthy families who can pay for prep, which runs as high as $1,000 an hour. Kaplan and the multibillion-dollar global test-prep industry he spawned would not only boost the SAT’s popularity but help its brand expand worldwide. The ACT gained ground in the middle of the country, while the SAT was the choice on the coasts.ĭespite the College Board’s initial claim that it wasn’t possible to study for the SAT, in 1938 a Brooklyn plumber’s son named Stanley Kaplan started offering SAT-prep classes in his parents’ basement. Meant to gauge what students had learned in high school, it was marketed to large public universities. The College Board’s sole competitor, an Iowa City, Iowa-based organization called American College Testing, launched a different kind of entrance exam in 1959. Stanley Kaplan spawned a multibillion-dollar global test-prep industry that boosted the SAT’s popularity. It makes all that sound like science when it’s not.” It provides a shiny scientific cover for a system of inequality that guarantees that rich kids go to the most selective college. Bush and Bill Clinton, says the College Board deserves some of the blame. Carnevale, an economist who served on commissions for Presidents George W. “College has become the capstone in an inequality machine that raises and perpetuates class and race hierarchies and sinks the lower classes,” writes Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce in his 2020 book, The Merit Myth, which lays out the ways that America’s most selective colleges foster and perpetuate wealth disparity. The growing criticism of admissions tests is part of a larger debate about access to higher education in America. Forbes estimates that thwarted spring and fall test dates have kept more than 1.5 million students from taking the SAT, resulting in as much as $200 million in lost revenue for the College Board. Some are now questioning the SAT’s long-term survival. After becoming CEO in 2012, Coleman turned the organization into a seemingly invincible cash machine. What has emerged from interviews with more than 75 sources, including 13 former highly placed College Board executives, all of whom asked not to be identified because they still work in education or related businesses in which the College Board wields considerable influence, is a picture of an organization under serious strain, run by an elitist, tone-deaf chief executive. To critics who say the College Board isn’t fulfilling its mission: “Each year, we help clear a path for more than 7 million students to own their own future.” “Local schools and test centers make individual decisions about whether to administer the SAT,” writes a spokesperson. Instead, it’s hunkering down, refusing repeated requests from Forbes to speak to senior management and answering questions solely by email. If the College Board has a recovery plan, it isn’t articulating it. campuses are implementing a test-blind policy for the fall 2021 cycle. “There’s no two ways about it.” In late May, the university system announced its admissions officers would stop considering test scores entirely starting in 2023, and five U.C. “I believe this test is a racist test,” said Regent Jonathan Sures during a UC conference call. The Regents were moved by the data on disadvantaged students. Prior to the pandemic, the Board of Regents of the prestigious University of California system, in the state with the largest share of the nation’s SAT takers, had considered whether to get rid of the test. For many students and colleges, the testing exodus will make 2021 one of the most bewildering admissions cycles ever (see our guide to admissions during the pandemic).
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