https://www.latimes.com/socal/daily-pilot/opinion/tn-dpt-me-patrice-apodaca-column-newport-beach-20190610-story.html

My question:
Who appointed or voted for the College Board to have an “unhealthy power over college admissions,” to quote Ms. Apodaca, and to continue to mess with our public schools? Why do they have all that power? And, why do we continue to allow them such unfettered leeway?

I’m struck by Ms. Apodaca’s statement that [the adversity index] is a desperate, cynical attempt by this company to stay relevant and maintain its unhealthy power over college admissions.

It may well be.

As I see it and as I’ve written many times, in the name of “good, equitable, fair, and maybe even positive ideas,” the powerful College Board has managed to ruin accommodations policies on the SAT and for our schools. What does the score mean if someone takes the same test with twice as much time as others get–and nobody knows! That’s their policy–and it’s powerful. Thus, it’s disheartening for teachers to uphold their honest grading policy when the big guys won’t do that. Second, as I see it, the College Board also has–in too many ways–set the curriculum for our PUBLIC schools–by what they decide to test on any given day. They decide and we sneeze. And third, now this? A flawed attempt to fix a real real world issue of inequality.

Did you vote for them? Did you appoint them? I know that I didn’t.

About Miriam

Miriam Kurtzig Freedman, JD, MA—an expert in public education, focused on special education law— is a lawyer, author, speaker, consultant, and reformer. For more than 35 years, Miriam worked with educators, parents, policy makers, and citizens to translate complex legalese into plain English and focus on good practices for children. Now, she focuses her passion on reforming special education, with her new book, Special Education 2.0—Breaking Taboos to Build a NEW Education Law. Presentations include those at the AASA Conference, Orange County (CA), Boston College (MA), CADRE (OR), and the Fordham Institute (DC). Her writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Education Week, Education Next, Hoover Digest, The University of Chicago Law Review on line, DianeRavitch.net, and The Atlantic Monthly on line.

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