School’s almost beginning, and as a math teacher, I want to show you some exciting numbers!
First, many parents will have to sign their children up for the SAT, at $51 for one test, and perhaps their children will take it two or three times. The SAT is brought to you by non-profits such as the College Board and Educational Testing Service (ETS). Many parents will also sign their children up for one or more AP exams at $89 per exam.
Gaston Caperton, the President of the College Board, has greater compensation than the President of Harvard, or the Red Cross, as reported by Bloomberg News in 2011.
The value of Gaston Caperton’s compensation was $1.3 million including deferred compensation in 2009, according to tax filings, also surpassing that of the president of Harvard University. Richard Ferguson, the now-retired chief executive officer of rival testing company ACT Inc., got compensation valued at $1.1 million. Nineteen executives at the New York- based College Board got more than $300,000.
19 times $300,000 equals $5,700,000.
When Caperton, a former two-term governor of West Virginia, started at the College Board, he had total compensation of about $404,000. Under his tenure, the company has more than doubled revenue — to $660 million in the year ended June 2010. It had a surplus of $66 million.
From the same Bloomberg article, we also learn about the President of Educational Testing Service (ETS).
Educational Testing’s president, Kurt Landgraf, had compensation of $742,000 in 2009, the most recent tax filing available. The Princeton, New Jersey-based company generated $906 million in revenue with a surplus of $7.42 million that year.
As I understand, non-profit organizations such as these enjoy tax breaks that for profit businesses do not. Also, Edweek recently reported that the College Board, which already sells AP Statistics and AP Calculus exams, wants to offer a new mathematics-based AP exam. They do not yet know what topic it will be.
For math, [College Board Vice President] Chakravarty said it’s not at all clear yet what new course might be added.”We don’t know what it would be yet,” said Chakravarty. “We have AP statistics, AP calculus, and AP computer science, so is there another? … Is it college algebra? Applied mathematics?”
They are going to make a new AP test. They don’t know what the subject will be. Perhaps this logic is the result of some exciting numbers:
For the class of 2012, the participation rate for the two AP calculus courses was 282,000, up from 218,000 for the graduating class five years earlier. For AP statistics, the 2012 figure was 129,000, up from 82,000 five years earlier. Meanwhile, AP computer science—which includes significant math content—climbed from 11,700 to 19,100 over the past five years.
$89 times (282,000 + 129,000 + 19,100) equals $38,278,900. That’s just the revenue from math exams. History and Language are more popular than math in terms of AP tests taken.
As my recently deceased Contemporary American History teacher Jim Owen used to end his lectures, I ask you BMGers:
Questions, Comments, Observations?
Well this certainly explains why AP courses are being pushed in every high school in Boston. I still haven’t heard any info of how many kids, by school, who actually pass the exams. I just thought it was a formal way the district was able to track students and still be pc. We don’t see much inclusion of SPED or behavior problems in the AP courses at my school.
I’ll admit it, I envy the AP teachers, one less teaching period, and small classes with high level, polite students who don’t appear to have “issues.” While I’m down in the trenches “diversifying my instruction” and using “the workshop model” (a teaching method the system bought into but is totally inappropriate for many high school courses) with the remaining kids.
Now I realize that the “business of education” has reared it ugly head once again for the financial gains of a few at ACT Inc., College Board, and ETS. I wish it were possible to sue for educational malpractice. “IRS 990 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 reform is way overdue” is becoming my new mantra.
…”much inclusion of SPED or behavior problems in the AP courses”. That’s the point of advanced placement, an opportunity for those who have shown to do well to take more challenging courses and if successful apply them toward college credit. Those with most kinds of special needs will not be successful in an AP course (though I have long said that the need to be challenged IS ITSELF a “special need”) and those with behavoir problems tend not to be academic stars either. Some departments in my high school required previous teacher and/or department chair approval for kids to enroll in these classes. If I recall correctly though the teacher’s class schedule was distributed so that the teacher would have some AP classes and some not as there were never more than two classes worth of AP for a given subject.
Of course you are correct, and that is how an AP program should be run. It’s as if we are talking about two different worlds. “Previous teacher or department approval to enroll” I can’t tell you how foreign that is to me. Teaching in a district that has exam schools, which cream off the best students, and has been decimated by charter schools, and is still recovering from Bill Gates “Small Schools” experiment. Students who are placed in AP courses at my school, are average regular ed kids who know how to behave. Now, when I can dissociate and look at it from the kid’s perspective, it is as if , for a couple of periods a day, these students are able count on a “normal” class.
True story, I saw that a very low level student had been assigned to an “Honors math” class. I went to the math teacher to voice my concerns. She told me when she addressed it with the guidance counselor, she was told that the student had been put in “Honors Math” to “build his esteem” and she should “differentiate” her instruction! That way the student could walk away with an “Honors” grade on his transcript. My feelings were that the student’s self-esteem would be built if he were assigned the appropriate course, completed the work and develop some basic math skills.
As I am remembering this incident, I can’t recall any discussion ever about the “self-esteem” of students who take an AP course, complete the rigorous work, but don’t pass the exam!
I suppose you could do all self-selection as long as students and parents understand the expectations. I meant to mention that my high school required that students enrolled in AP classes sit for the exams. The risk is that you could crash and burn, but the rewards are not only the aforementioned college credit, but at least in my HS a heavily weighed grade point (A+=4.0 in a college prep course, 4.5 for honors, and 5.0 for AP.). There was one AP course (Computer Science) that did not prepare us well for the exam. It was too easy and we all got As, which was great for the GPA, but even the class computer geek (which I mean in the nicest way as he was friend) only got a 2 out of a possible 5 and the rest of us got 1s.
The College Board has successfully fought to get the SAT (with modification) accepted as a high-stakes test for NCLB. Massachusetts won’t buy it, but CB is now actively marketing the test as such.
to use a norm-referenced test for graduation requirement…
you found a link for that?
One of our assistant prinicipals (a former student) told me he had been talking with a College Board rep who was explaining it to him. She didn’t expect that Massachusetts would do it. There are allegedly supposed to alter the test. I suppose they could treat the raw score differently and norm it differently.
All I can find is an article involving some “research” and Maine and an argument for it in Maine.
The College Board is a strange beast.