Michael Hynes is Superintendent of the Patchogue-Medford School District on Long Island in New York State.
He writes about his contempt for the College Board.
He writes:
“Reader beware. Before you read my thoughts about the educational sacred cow and standardized testing machine known as the College Board, you should know up front that I am no fan of the College Board CEO/President David Coleman who years ago was the architect of Common Core.
“Most of us in the educational world know of the Common Core State Standards and the “test focused education reform movement” that accompanied it was a fiasco that still plagues American schools today.
“Mr. Coleman was on the English Language Arts writing team and his good friend and eventual partner at Student Achievement Partners (SAP) Jason Zimba was a leader on the Common Core Mathematics team. Student Achievement Partners is a non-profit organization that researches and develops achievement based assessment standards.
“Interesting enough, it was funded in part by Bill Gates. The final nail in the coffin for me was when I realized Mr. Coleman, his former assistant and Mr. Zimba were founding board members for Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst, an organization that lobbies for standards driven educational reform.
“Do you see a pattern?
“Now Mr. Coleman leads the College Board money-making machine and this educational monolith is the church that most public schools worship several times a year.
“For the reader who doesn’t know what The College Board is: it is the ultimate gatekeeper and judge-jury-executioner for millions of students each year who dream to enter college and it literally is a hardship for many families due to the test taking expense.
“Schools and families have no other choice because there is no other game in town, aside from a student taking the ACT exam.
“The College Board claims to be a non-profit organization, but it’s hard to take that claim seriously when its exam fees for the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), Advanced Placement test (AP), services for late registration, score verification services and a multitude of other related fees are costing families and schools millions of dollars each year.
“Eleven years ago this “non-profit” made a profit of $55 million and paid nineteen College Board Executives’ salaries that ranged from three hundred thousand dollars to over one million dollars a year.
“That trend continues today.
“Cost aside, it is hard to fathom and understand how the College Board has claimed a monopoly-like status over our public school system.
“Over the years it has literally convinced school administrators, school board trustees, teachers, parents and students they can’t live without what they sell. They sell classes and tests to schools like Big Pharma sells pills to consumers.”
Read on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If more parents would understand this, things might change. The problem will always be competition…. and competition drives the market. Let’s also not forget that Merit Scholarships are based on these scores, yet the government tax dollars to fund merit scholarships has stagnated over the years. The competition is now fierce for less funds. This will have to be a grassroots effort by parents because school admin and guidance are pushing this nonsense daily at the HS level. The parents have been disengaged from the total education process and the kids are naive and malleable. The whole HS experience has become a lie based on sham tests and the promise of a better life if you just take the tests numerous times. It’s wrong and it needs to end.
Ka-CHING!
The clueless elitism of ed reformers, episode 5002:
“Elevating skills over pedigree creates new pathways to employment and tailored training and a gateway to the middle class.”
That’s Ivanka Trump, at a trades school. She’s surrounded by those other pedigreed people who have never worked for a wage in their entire lives- Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos.
I want them tested publicly. They can sit for the 7th grade Common Core test and 7th graders can watch. Not one of them would pass it.
“Merit!” I mean, for goodness sakes. Do they think our children are idiots? I get that they won but can they do public school parents a favor and just stay in DC or NYC or on the gated estate? We’re trying to instill a work ethic here. We don’t need bad adult examples.
Bill Gates had sunk $2.5 billion into Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Only 4 states never took the bait to adopt CCSS in the first place. They were Alaska, Nebraska, Virginia and Texas. Some other states have opted out of all or some of the CCSS.
Since they’ve changed the SAT to be CCSS compliant, how do students in these states take the SAT? Is it still the old version?
The SAT has been redesigned to align with Common Core. Period.
“At Oakland High School, the faculty, students and administrators who showed DeVos around said they hoped she came away from their campus with a greater appreciation for what goes on there.
“We’re public education, and we do it right,” said principal Bill Spurlock.
Brianna Bivins, a junior, added that she doubts a private school could offer the health sciences classes that she takes at Oakland. “It’s good for her to see this kind of class,” she said of DeVos. “It gives a good perspective of our public schools.”
Call me crazy, but I don’t agree with this idea that public school teachers and students have to prove to Betsy DeVos that their school has value.
She supposedly works FOR THEM. Instead of hoping to persuade her that someone in DC should support their school could we possibly turn this around, where the “public servants” have to prove to THEM that ed reform offers them something of value?
it’s ludicrous that public school students feel they have to defend their school from federal employees. It’s wrong. Brianna Bivens doesn’t serve Betsy DeVos. Betsy DeVos serves Brianna Givens. If Betsy DeVos can’t do that, maybe she should stay out of public schools.
Betsy DeVos never learns anything new. She will spout “Choice” regardless of evidence to the contrary.
I see a pattern in the banal test score dichotomy.
The live by the sword fluxion, where the ranks that were proofed (certified) with test scores, are commanded to sort the ranks, with test scores.
“And so, the circle is complete”…
Thank you Michael Hynes.
It is my feeling that we should do away with all industry that sponges off the education of young people. We have redefined what it means to work hard for success. Industries that make money by selling school systems on ideas should have to account for the effects of their ideas on the children.
Sometimes their ideas are innocuous. Some outfit sold our system on the idea of writing standards in the form of “I can” statements. For a time, teachers spent inordinate amounts of time writing these slogans to hang on their walls. It was silly, of course, and the students sensed the silliness of it. Sometimes the ideas are insidious. Students being asked to complete work that is not appropriate to their achievement just because it is the brainchild of someone who thinks about such things from afar is a major problem in education today. Either way, industrial salaries for those not directly involved in teaching students take away from students.
One person paid a million a year takes away ten to twenty teachers who could positively impact the live of children. It is indeed time to rise up. Money should go to helping children, not padding industrial egos.
I wish as a parent I could believe this. But our two state flagships which are, in my view, affordable options and great schools, heavily weigh the SAT and APs in admissions decisions. Their marketing materials on the profile of the freshman class focuses on a) SAT/ACT Scores b) Number of APs taken and scores c) class ranking (bolstered by AP) d) weighted gpa (bolstered by AP)
So the holistic process is BS. Their own stats show they take in the 90+% of the top 20% of a class and SAT over X – and you can only get in those ranks with AP in “competitive schools” and by tutoring for the SAT.
The admissions officers say they evaluate whether the student took advantage of the most “rigorous” curriculum available which translates to AP.
I called another state’s flagship and they weigh SAT and GPA (AP weighted) evenly and they give preference in their engineering program to kids that took the big 3 APs – calc, physics, and chem.
I sometimes get very worried that I let my son take unweighted electives to explore when our flagships get 40k applications and they weed out by using a lot of the College Board’s measurements of success.
But I did cap him at 2 APs junior year and again 2 senior year. I thought anything else was ridiculous.
Pity that more families don’t realize that it is much easier to transfer in to many selective universities than to gain admission as a first year/freshman student. Makes the standardized test scores less important, since there are the grades from the first college.
Coleman-Gates
Gates gave the local university money. The local university sent people to my classroom to convince the students, my students that they wouldn’t graduate if they were transfers. $ More for College Board. $
Education isn’t a business. Real estate is a business. Insurance is a business. Education is not a business.
2015 990
$1B in assets
$362M Revenue from Assessments
But the real gravy comes from AP, Instruction and Practice $408M
And love the compensation of its officers and directors
Also branching out to other countries.
Click to access 131623965_201512_990.pdf
That’s why I refuse to have my children take the SATs. I boycott them! But I can’t convince others to do the same. They fear their children won’t get into a good college, or will miss out on merit aid.