Earlier this month, the College Board released the final framework for its new AP African American studies course. After years of insisting that critical race theory isn’t taught in public schools, the Left reacted in horror to the news that, after high-profile criticism from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Florida, the course would no longer teach critical race theory.

The College Board could have just taken its lump. Instead, it insisted against all appearances that Florida had nothing to do with its revisions, swore that all the academic ideologues it name-checked in earlier drafts would still be made available and encouraged, and picked a very shrill fight with the state of Florida. Now, it looks like a disingenuous, partisan organization riding for a further fall.

No one objected to the first three-quarters of the original curricular framework. The problem was that the last quarter assigned a laundry list of far-left academic ideologues without any counterbalance. Florida flagged ideological concerns. The College Board removed the ideologues. Problem solved. Or so it seemed. Few believed College Board CEO David Coleman when he insisted that Florida had not influenced the revision process. But Florida took note when he told NPR that "sources that people were thinking are gone are actually going to be magnified and made more available than ever," in supplemental materials.

SCHOOL CHOICE WINNING STREAK? IT'S THE CULTURE WAR, STUPID

The Florida Department of Education sent a letter asking for clarification and restated the history of its correspondence with the College Board, providing strong suggestive evidence that it had influenced the revisions. At 8 o’clock on Saturday night, the College Board clapped back by releasing an extremely shrill letter attacking the Florida Department of Education for "misinformation." It denied having "negotiated about the contents of the course with Florida or any other state," or receiving "any requests, suggestions, or feedback," even as it explained the requests and feedback it received from Florida. Florida had, for example, requested an explanation of how the course would not violate its anti-CRT law, inquired as to whether its treatment of the Black Panthers would be strictly historical or push their ideology, and pressed for an explanation on how the College Board defined "intersectionality."

The College Board then removed the week’s lesson on "intersectionality." This could not have been, as it said, in response to student feedback. After all, that part of the course had not yet been taught. But litigation aside, the core issue is that College Board has admitted that its revisions were cosmetic, that supplementary materials would continue to present the one-sided vision of far-left academic activists, and in the process it sided with those scholar-activists in a fashion more consistent with a partisan advocacy organization than a disinterested scholarly association.

This is not the last chapter in this saga. Whereas Florida and other red states could have accepted the revised standards on their face, that now seems all but impossible given Coleman’s admission that the revision was an exercise in Trojan Horse reconstruction.

The strange timing of the College Board’s snide missive suggests it may have been directly responsive to a Friday call from the National Black Justice League for Coleman’s resignation. While the Right doesn’t have a robust NGO complex in education, it does have the House of Representatives. The Education and Workforce Committee should call Coleman to testify and press him on how, exactly, stacking course resources predominantly with readings from critical race theorists and other far-left ideologues constitutes education rather than indoctrination. It’s hard to see how that would go well for Coleman. But it would be quite educational for American parents.

Beyond merely declining to offer AP African American studies, DeSantis also has a nuclear option at his disposal. Florida universities currently accept both the College Board’s SAT and its competitor, the ACT. It wouldn’t take more than the stroke of a legislative pen for Florida’s universities to go ACT-only. Florida could also put out a request for proposals for other firms to offer content-specific tests for college credit. Other red states could follow suit on both fronts.

It would perhaps be sad to see America’s political balkanization extend to standardized tests. But the College Board knew full well that it was playing with political fire. And it played badly. When formerly disinterested institutions decide to transform themselves into partisan actors, a political response is necessary and proper.

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Max Eden is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

In its February 11 statement, the College Board condemned how Florida officials framed their disagreements about the course. “While it has been claimed that the College Board was in frequent dialogue with Florida about the content of AP African American studies, this is a false and politically motivated charge.” 

The organization also said that it had “no negotiations about the content of this course with Florida or any other state, nor did we receive any requests, suggestions, or feedback.” According to the statement, the Florida Department of Education did not offer substantive criticisms of the course, instead asking “vague, uninformed questions like, ‘What does the word “intersectionality” mean?' and ‘Does the course promote Black Panther thinking?’”

Florida is a major user of the College Board’s marquee exams and programs: the SAT, ACT, and advanced placement courses. In 2020, the state had the highest rate of AP participation in the country, and still requires its state university system colleges to use the SAT or ACT, despite a growing national test-optional movement. During the first year of the pandemic, Florida, unlike other states, refused to waive the SAT or ACT requirement. 

“Florida's state scholarship, Bright Future, requires the SAT or ACT and has even increased the score requirements during the pandemic,” Jennifer Jessie, a tutor for the SAT, ACT, and advanced placement courses who lives in Virginia, tells Teen Vogue via email. “The College Board has long put the interest of Black students behind the interest of [revenue].”

The debate over this curriculum is the College Board’s most accurate controversy, but it is far from its first. Advanced placement exams have had vocal critics for years, as many argue that the exams are prohibitively expensive and not an adequate measure of learning. The organization also drew significant criticism for how it handled online exams during the beginning of the pandemic, with at-home tests proving to be a challenge for those without reliable internet access and some students having to take exams during religious holidays. These challenges came at the expense of low-income and minority students. 

Many students have insisted that the structure of an AP class, particularly its emphasis on testing and the multiple-choice format of the exams, can be a hindrance to the learning process, particularly for neurodivergent students. Hagopian, who used to teach AP United States history, agreed with this sentiment. “My critique of the College Board comes not just from an academic inquiry standpoint but also from my experience as a teacher who was being asked to teach to a test rather than teach to my students,” he explains. “It really kills a lot of the joy in the classroom when students are constantly asking, ‘Is that on the test?’ rather than, ‘How can I apply these lessons of history to help create a better society today?’ Those are the questions I want students to ask, and the College Board curriculum has never been organized around that idea.”

Teen Vogue has reached out to the College Board for comment.

TALLAHASSEE — As Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republican leaders explore alternatives to the College Board’s AP classes and tests, top state officials have been meeting with the founder of an education testing company supporters say is focused on the “great classical and Christian tradition.”

The Classic Learning Test, founded in 2015, is used primarily by private schools and home-schooling families and is rooted in the classical education model, which focuses on the “centrality of the Western tradition.”

The founder of the company, Jeremy Tate, said the test is meant to be an alternative to the College Board-administered SAT exam, which he says has become “increasingly ideological” in part because it has “censored the entire Christian-Catholic intellectual tradition” and other “thinkers in the history of Western thought.”

As DeSantis’ feud with the College Board intensified this week, Tate had several meetings in Tallahassee with Ray Rodrigues, the state university system’s chancellor, and legislators to see if the state can more broadly offer the Classic Learning Test to college-bound Florida high school students.

“We’re thrilled they like what we’re doing,” Tate said. “We’re talking to people in the administration, again, really, almost every day right now.”

Specifically, Tate said he is seeking to make the test an option for the taxpayer-funded Bright Futures Scholarship program, which rewards Florida high school students based on academic achievement. Students can use the scholarship to help pay for a Florida-based college education. Currently, the scholarship is tied to the SAT and ACT test scores.

While DeSantis has not publicly singled out the Classic Learning Test as an alternative to the College Board’s SAT, he has said he wants to seek out “other vendors” who can do it “better” than the SAT. A top education official in his administration has indicated interest in the CLT test.

“Not only do we need to build anew by returning to the foundations of our democracy, but CLT also offers the opportunity for all our colleges & universities to rightsize their priorities,” Florida Department of Education Senior Chancellor Henry Mack posted on Twitter on Thursday.

Mack also amplified a tweet by Chad Pecknold, a Classical Learning Test board member, that said people seeking a testing option focused on the “great classical and Christian tradition” should go with the Classical Learning Test option.

The governor’s office and the Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment regarding Mack’s tweets. DeSantis’ office also did not respond when asked whether Classical Learning Test was being considered as an option.

Rodrigues confirmed in a text message Friday that he met with Classical Learning Test executives this week because he wanted to learn more about their product.

“As you know the State University System is the largest university system in the country that still requires an entrance exam as part of our admissions process. We currently accept SAT and ACT,” Rodrigues said. “Adding another option for our students could be a method of improvement.”

The option would not be coming out of nowhere. In accurate months, national conservative groups have called on governors to make state university admissions and state-funded scholarship programs accept the Classical Learning Test exam to make the schools “more charter and home-school friendly.”

“Many governors champion school choice. Those same governors should champion their state’s colleges and universities including the Classic Learning Test as an equal option to the SAT and ACT,” Kevin Roberts, a Classical Learning Test board member and president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, wrote in a public “memo to governors” in November.

“Which governor will lead?” asked Roberts.

Reshaping education, one step at a time

DeSantis, who is eyeing a run for president in 2024, has been reshaping Florida’s education system by aggressively targeting what he calls a “woke ideology” and “indoctrination” in K-12 schools and higher education institutions.

This year, he has largely turned his focus on the higher education system, proposing the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and mandating courses in Western civilization, a focus of the classical education model.

Classical Learning Test will be hosting a Florida Classical Education Summit on March 10 at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, one of its partner colleges. The event includes sessions titled “Florida: A Case Study in Education Freedom,” “The Power of Parental Choice & Why Parents are Choosing Classical Education” and “Testing Discussion: The Role of Assessments in K-12,” among others.

While Tate admits conservatives are more likely to gravitate toward the Classic Learning Test — and that the company’s long list of advisers includes influential conservatives that have DeSantis’ ear — he asserted, “We don’t want to be a Trumpy or conservative test.”

Tate, whose background was in SAT and ACT prep classes, has also publicly argued that the solution to “mainstream” education is giving parents an education alternative to “left-wing indoctrination.”

Florida House Speaker Paul Renner was asked by DeSantis to look at alternatives to the College Board. In a statement this week, he said the goal is to look at providers who are focused on “delivering high-quality and fact-based education, not indoctrination.”

Tate also told the Herald that Rodrigues was “very positive” when discussing expanding access to his test in Florida.

“We spent time looking through the test together, and he said it seems to fit, in terms of what they’re looking for,” Tate said.

How the tests compare

Roughly 200 largely faith-based schools across the country accept the assessment. Ten of them are in Florida, including Stetson University, Ave Maria University, Reformation Bible College, Palm Beach Atlantic University, Pensacola Christian College and Trinity Baptist College.

According to the Classical Learning Test’s website, the two-hour online assessment includes three sections: Verbal reasoning, grammar and writing, and quantitative reasoning. It costs $54, a dollar less than the SAT. The test scores vary for the ACT, SAT and CLT. For example, the highest score for the CLT is 120; for the SAT it is 1,600 and for the ACT it is 36.

The company says its test exists to “reconnect knowledge and virtue by providing meaningful assessment and connections to seekers of truth, goodness, and beauty.”

Erika Donalds, an avid school choice proponent and the wife of Republican Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples, says the main difference between the tests is that the Classic Learning Test refers to classic literature and historical texts and the SAT and ACT follow “the Common Core route,” which includes nonfiction texts.

More broadly, however, she said there’s been a growing mistrust toward the SAT and AP courses, arguing the “SAT and the ACT are not very transparent.”

“As parents, we don’t get to see the questions,” Donalds said. “So I have a greater trust in reliability in CLT because I know the values behind that organization and what they stand for.”

Erika Donalds, founder of the Optima Foundation, a network of classical charter schools in Florida with close ties to Hillsdale College in MIchigan, said she’s been asking for an alternative to the College Board exam since the “anti-common core movement” began around 2009.

“We don’t feel like the SAT necessarily tells certain colleges what they would like to know about our graduates and what they know and how well they can read and comprehend historical texts and classical literature,” she said.

For Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, a nonprofit that helps states design and evaluate tests, the CLT brings its own set of questions, such as how a relatively new test will stand up to a diverse pool of students compared to the more widely available SAT and ACT, and whether higher education institutions outside of Florida will accept it.

In addition, Marion said, college admission departments may not want to change their process too much.

“It could be fine for Florida schools, but what about the kids who want to go out of state?” he asked. Officials “have to know that the other colleges will take the test.”

• • •

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CNN  — 

There is something weird in the fact that the College Board is now the latest bogeyman for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ efforts to purge his state’s education system of “woke” indoctrination.

The nonprofit also owns the SAT test, which has long been criticized as a key barrier to making college campuses more diverse.

DeSantis has made targeting diversity programs a main point of his policy agenda. That effort has set off a public battle with the College Board, which owns and administers the Advanced Placement program, over its plans to offer a new AP course on African American studies.

RELATED: Ron DeSantis can now make his agenda a reality ahead of a possible 2024 announcement

Read the details on that public spat from CNN’s Tina Burnside and Gregory Clary. And learn more about the controversial proposed AP African American studies course curriculum from CNN’s Nicole Chavez.

The short version is that Florida demanded changes to the course. After first seeming to strip back the portions that Florida found objectionable, the College Board later hit back at Florida, accusing the state department of education of “slander” and documenting months when differences over the curriculum could have been addressed by Florida, but were not.

DeSantis suggested at a news conference Tuesday that Florida could move on from the College Board altogether.

“Who elected them? Are there other people that provide services? Turns out there are,” he said, suggesting the International Baccalaureate as an example of an alternative.

More than a third of US public high school graduates in the class of 2021 took at least one AP class, according to data from the College Board. In Florida, students from 733 public high schools took an AP test, per College Board data.

It’s worth noting here that there is one area where Florida has shown steadfast support for the College Board: by requiring SAT scores.

When many state universities around the country made SAT and ACT tests optional for college admissions during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Florida did not. (The ACT is administered by a nonprofit organization that competes with the College Board.)

Back then, DeSantis was intent on putting Florida at the forefront of fighting Covid-19 restrictions and trying to force school districts to stay open. There were no exceptions to waive the SAT or ACT, even though students were struggling to get access to tests.

Now, moving on to purge diversity efforts, he has demanded the names of staff and programs involved with diversity at public colleges and universities. And he’s led the charge to crack down on what school districts can teach on the issues of race and gender.

DeSantis’ moves against diversity programs are the polar opposite of how critics of the SAT view the test.

Big public universities in California that have been barred by voters from applying affirmative action to diversify campuses have ditched the SAT and ACT.

Many prestigious private universities have made the tests optional. Harvard University, for example, has made them optional through 2026.

If, as expected, the Supreme Court outlaws the consideration of race in any admissions programs, moving away from tests is a salve suggested by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“Universities will still be able to stop considering factors that have been proven to create unjustifiable barriers for historically underrepresented students of color,” is the suggestion in a post on the ACLU’s website. “For example, many schools have already stopped considering (the) SAT and the ACT.”

These are obviously separate issues – Florida’s dislike of the AP African American studies curriculum and the separate criticism of standardized tests as barriers to inclusion.

But they both feed into the large role the College Board – which advertises itself as a nonprofit but in some years generates more than $1 billion in revenue and pays top executives seven-figure salaries – plays in American education.

The College Board has frequently been accused of a lack of transparency, but it does explain on its website that representatives from its 6,000-plus member organizations – including colleges, universities, secondary schools and school districts – appoint delegates to serve on its three national assemblies.

The College Board did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Jon Boeckenstedt is the vice provost for enrollment management at Oregon State University. He recently wrote for Slate that we should not forget that the College Board, while a nonprofit, acts very much like a business – something he learned when he sat on College Board advisory boards more than a decade ago.

In a phone conversation, he said it is both a feature and flaw of the US educational system that there is no national curriculum.

“The good thing is that states and even local entities are allowed to sort of mold and create the curriculum that is most relevant to their citizens and their population,” Boeckenstedt said.

“On the other hand, it makes it extraordinarily difficult for us as a nation to figure out whether students are learning the things we think they should be learning, and we have no real way to assess or even compare learning for school districts, across different schools and across different populations,” he said.

As a result, the College Board has filled the vacuum and, according to Boeckenstedt, “is sort of entrenched in circular business processes that feed off each other and help it generate more of its monopoly status.”

He said states should take some power back from the College Board. For instance, he’d like to see states gather and share the information of their prospective college students with universities rather than allowing the College Board to license that information to schools and generate revenue with it.

Boeckenstedt also argued that teachers are so focused on preparing students for the AP tests that they feel constricted from veering off the curriculum.

John Moscatiello, founder of the AP test prep company Marco Learning, told me a lot of teachers are frustrated by aspects of the AP program, but also respect it for the breadth of input and knowledge that are put into the course outlines.

He said the College Board has responded to criticism, restoring some years of history to its world history classes and adding a math course to address the problem of students not being ready for college-level math.

“Does Ron DeSantis get to tell the College Board what the national curriculum should be? That doesn’t seem right,” Moscatiello told me in a phone interview. “But does the College Board, an unelected body and a not-for-profit, get to tell the people of Florida what goes into a course? That’s the contradiction that everyone’s struggling with.”

The great danger he fears is that the entire program falls victim to the culture wars.

He pointed out that governors in states like Illinois, California and New Jersey have declared that they are pro AP African American studies and will expand the course. What’s currently offered nationwide could grow in blue states and be excised from some red states.

“The College Board may find itself in a situation that the AP program is perceived of as a blue state product or set of services, not for everyone – and this is a nightmare.”

Tens of thousands of Florida high school students take Advanced Placement courses every year to have a competitive edge heading into college.

Now, Gov. Ron DeSantis says he wants to reevaluate the state’s relationship with the College Board, the private company that administers those courses and the SAT exam. And that has some high school students worried.

“I don’t see how I could have gotten ahead without them,” said Eli Rhoads, a senior at Pasco County’s Mitchell High School, who said AP courses helped him get a full scholarship to the University of Alabama. “You almost have to have these courses to stand out.”

DeSantis has not made clear exactly what he plans to change, but his remarks come after the College Board on Saturday accused his administration of playing politics when it rejected its new Advanced Placement African American studies course over allegations that it “lacks educational value.”

“This College Board, like, nobody elected them to anything,” DeSantis said at a news conference Monday in Naples. “They are just kind of there, and they provide a service, and so you can either utilize those services or not.”

While DeSantis acknowledged the College Board’s long-standing presence in the state, he said “there are probably other vendors who may be able to do that job as good or maybe even a lot better.”

A College Board spokesperson said the organization had no comment on the governor’s statements.

The dispute between the College Board and DeSantis is indicative of the Republican governor’s take-no-prisoners brand of politics. The board joins Walt Disney World in the ranks of companies the governor has wrangled with for not adopting conservative stances on education matters.

“This is about the governor trying to cancel the companies he doesn’t like,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando. “He’s screaming and complaining about ideology being pushed onto our schools, yet what he continues to do is push his ideology onto us.”

As with Disney, Florida has long had a strong relationship with the College Board.

The state pays for students to take Advanced Placement exams and provides teachers a bonus of $50 for each student they teach in an AP course who earns a test score of 3 or higher.

College Board offers eight AP courses in languages and culture; seven science-based courses, such as physics and biology; six math and computer science courses, including calculus; nine history and social science courses; two English courses and three arts courses. It also has a special diploma program called Capstone, which some Republican lawmakers are trying to include for credit toward Bright Futures eligibility.

In 2021, nearly 200,000 Florida teens sat for more than 366,000 tests, for which they can earn college credit. It had the fifth-highest rate of tests taken per 1,000 students in the nation.

The College Board also administers the SAT exam, which students may use to help them complete graduation testing requirements, earn entry into universities and become eligible for Bright Futures scholarships.

If the state were to move away from the College Board, though, other options exist.

Students seeking advanced courses leading to college credits have International Baccalaureate, Cambridge Programme and dual enrollment classes available. They also can take the ACT exam instead of the SAT.

Stella Tucker, another Mitchell High senior, will have taken 18 AP courses by the time she graduates in the top 10 of her class this spring. She said she finds the courses challenging academically — more reliably so than dual enrollment — while also preparing her for college.

She predicted a strong backlash from Florida teens if the governor and Legislature were to propose scaling back or eliminating AP courses.

“I think that would really put the students of Florida at a disadvantage,” Tucker said. Officials should “look more closely at what AP classes are doing for the students of the state of Florida and get their perspective. They’re the ones who would really be affected by all this.”

Florida students raised concerns about other aspects of the College Board during the height of the pandemic. They urged the state to change SAT exam requirements for state university admissions. But unlike most other states, the state did not back away from the mandate.

In this latest round, DeSantis’ dispute with the College Board is over an AP African American studies course that included the study of Black scholars and authors on courses like Black Lives Matter, Black queer studies and reparations.

On Saturday, the College Board said it is proud of its “historic” course, which has been crafted by renowned scholars. It acknowledged it made mistakes during the rollout and accused Florida of exploiting the situation.

“The vitriol aimed at these scholars is repulsive and must stop,” the group wrote.

DeSantis, who is eyeing a presidential run in 2024, has drawn national attention for his stance against what he calls “woke indoctrination” in schools, a stance that in the last two years has led to restricting certain aspects of race-related lessons.

The governor said that he has started taking steps to figure out what to do in response to the College Board’s footprint in the state. DeSantis said he had talked to House Speaker Paul Renner about the matter.

Renner’s office did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment. However, the Palm Coast Republican has shown to be on board with some of the governor’s education priorities, such as making changes to how Florida funds diversity, equity and inclusion programs at state universities and colleges.

In practice, it remains unclear what actions would change Florida students’ educational options.

“Of course, our universities can or can’t accept College Board courses for credit, maybe they’ll do others. And then also just whether our universities do the SAT versus the ACT. I think they do both, but we are going to evaluate how the process goes,” DeSantis said.

• • •

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If you’re a boomer like I am, and especially if you grew up on the East or West Coast, you have probably always been aware of the College Board. For us, it was just the company that created and administered the teenage rite of passage, the SAT (which was then called the Scholastic Aptitude Test but has now been rebranded as simply “SAT”).

And that’s probably all you thought about the College Board, if you thought about it at all: a fairly innocuous entity that seemed to be focused on the test that largely determined who went to college, and where they went to college. Was it run by the government? Was it a charity? Who knew? Who cared?

The reality might surprise you.

What people didn’t know then, and what they still seem not to understand now, even as the entity is in the news for the ongoing controversy over Florida’s involvement in amending the Advanced Placement curriculum in African American studies, is that the College Board is a business, despite its lofty mission statement, which suggests that it’s about “connect[ing] students to college success and opportunity.” Yes, it’s a not-for-profit business, but not-for-profit does not mean that it’s a charity. In fact, it’s about the furthest thing from a charity that you can imagine. Not-for-profit does not mean that it’s altruistic in its purpose; it simply means that excess revenue as profit is not distributed to private owners or shareholders but rather held by the company. (There was a brief period when the College Board changed its web domain from .org to .com, perhaps revealing more of itself than it should have, but this misstep was quickly corrected.)

Over the years, the College Board used its connections with high schools to expand the penetration of the PSAT, as a companion to the SAT; it uses the PSAT to collect names and information about students, which it then licenses to colleges who want to recruit those students as the de facto national database of high school students; it uses the results of the tests (for which half the students and half the school districts will, by definition, be below average) to promote its AP courses, to make students more “college ready” (an essentially meaningless term it invented); and it uses its substantial lobbying budget to convince legislators to make students take the SAT in order to graduate from high school, to pay for AP, and to make public universities accept the results of those exams and grant credit for them.

It’s an ingenious business model. And in America, businesses have the right to operate, as long as they don’t run afoul of the law. But like any business, the College Board should be held accountable for faults in its products and especially for public activities that contradict its mission.

When David Coleman was hired as president and CEO of the College Board in 2012, it was a business decision. As a leader of the effort to create and license Common Core, Coleman was part of the attempt to instill a national curriculum in K–12 schools, which is of course not necessarily a bad idea; one of the best and worst things about American secondary education is its widely divergent models and philosophies.

The great business opportunity at the time was to connect the SAT to Common Core. At last, it was believed, America would have a way of telling how well its students were learning. Never mind, of course, that all of this power and responsibility would be held in the boardroom of a private company that would have profited greatly from the connection to a national curriculum. (If one corporation could influence the curriculum and also create the tool used to measure achievement, school districts and states would have little choice but to use—and increase the use of—its products.) Alas, fate had other ideas, and Common Core quickly fell out of favor in the U.S. with both the left and the right—perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps because people had concerns about such intensely focused control in the hands of one company. Or, it might be said, in the hands of one man.

Coleman, it seems, has never actually taught a high school class (at least as far as the record reveals). He returned from Oxford with a master’s degree after studying on a Rhodes Scholarship, but could not find a job teaching English in a high school in New York City. Instead, he went to work at McKinsey, one of the country’s largest and best-known consulting firms, where business teaches business how to do business. In light of all this, it seems curious that America would trust someone like this to have such an outsize say in what was taught, when it was taught, and how it was taught.

His tenure at the College Board has been rife with public relations blunders, many of which might be expected at any billion-dollar business. What’s most concerning to people who work in secondary and higher education, though, is that many of these blunders seem to be, well, for lack of a better word, anti-education. And it is for these blunders that many believe the College Board should be held accountable.

Consider these actions, which seem inconsistent with a company concerned about education:

• After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, David Coleman sent an email to the membership, pointing out that student X González, a survivor of the massacre, apparently used knowledge from their AP courses in a speech they gave after the shooting. He then presumed to tell a high school student who had been traumatized by gun violence, after they went on to become an activist, that they might have been more measured and balanced in their criticism of gun laws and gun culture.

• The College Board not only hired but promoted to the executive level the speaker of the House in Indiana, Todd Huston, who supported state legislation that limited discussion of race in school classrooms, all while working at the company. In addition, in a move that would make any business proud, Coleman donated $10,000 to Huston’s campaign.

• During the pandemic, when it became clear that students would not be able to take AP exams in their traditional manner, the College Board announced that the exams would be 45 minutes in length and could be administered at home or anyplace students could connect to Wi-Fi (including the parking lot of a McDonald’s). While every organization was forced to scramble in light of COVID-19, the College Board announced—without asking anyone except long-time supporters of the College Board—that colleges would accept the results of the new, shortened AP exams, even though they provided little to no reliable statistics to demonstrate comparability between the old and new exams. Like a good business, it shirked responsibility and forced America’s universities, if they so chose, to be the bad guys in times of crisis. This was, conveniently, a good way to hedge against the massive revenue hit that would have resulted if the exams had been canceled.

• After years of promoting itself as a transparent organization, the College Board removed from public view granular data breaking down AP scores by state, race, and exam, instead providing what it called “streamlined reporting,” in a classic case of 1984-speak that would make any for-profit business proud.

• And most recently, of course, the College Board allowed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to essentially step into the role of America’s czar of high school curriculum, by bending to the will of the Florida Department of Education in dramatically whitewashing (literally and figuratively) the framework for the AP African American studies course. What’s almost as bad as following the lead of a future presidential candidate for political and business gain is the brazen lying of the College Board in initially claiming that Florida had played no role in the course redesign. Just this weekend, the College Board issued a statement, ostensibly falling on its sword for not pushing back on Florida earlier, but failing to explain how and why an organization designed to prioritize education somehow failed to take any leadership or to stake out a moral stance when Florida did what it did.

The College Board is a billion-dollar business, with over a billion dollars in assets (including as much as $150 million held in offshore accounts). It paid Coleman, its CEO, over $2.5 million in 2020, even after he had been demoted from the dual roles of president and CEO in early 2019, and paid several other executives over $500,000 in that same year, a year in which revenue dropped by $400 million.

It is no wonder that there have been frequent and repeated calls for the trustees of the College Board to remove Coleman from his position. Leadership comes with responsibilities that Coleman has clearly ignored or neglected.

Universities, too, of course, are not-for-profits, as are legitimate charities. It is not the tax status that should concern us, although perhaps a tax on some of that revenue would be warranted in the case of the College Board. What should concern us is that a private company has its tentacles so tightly wrapped around a public education system most Americans consider a public good.