Aiden Lee, writing in Wolf Prints, the student newspaper at Prairie Ridge High School in Crystal Lake, Illinois, completes an Advanced Placement Language and Composition class assignment by using the Declaration of Independence as a template to declare independence from the College Board. This corporation publishes the SAT and the AP tests.
“The truthfully brief history of College Board is a history of repeated disservices and transgressions, all having in direct object the profit of the company. To prove this, let facts be spoken fully and candidly,” Aiden wrote.
The transgressions include impeding the “willingness of students to involve themselves with their learning, replacing the essence of learning to learn with the motive of scoring well on a test.”
On the other hand, standardized testing has been used by school systems for decades to provide a measure of student learning that is common across schools, states, and years. It has also resulted in adjustments to the curriculum programs used by schools to teach students important lessons about content that plays a role in their lives. That has had the unfortunate side effect of narrowing the curriculum in our schools, especially those in the most disadvantaged areas, to material that is tested and affects “grades” on school report cards.
Please read the article and post a comment. If a corporation, such as the College Board, has done a disservice to schools or students in the sole interest of profit, that would indeed be a “transgression” by an “enemy” of education.
