Actual Criticisms of Collegeboard

Even thought I think Collegeboard is a net positive, there are still very valid criticisms of Collegeboard.

I found this article [1] on Collegeboard's flaws, and I think they and the points they brought up are very valid. Admittedly, I haven't read the referenced article, but I have verified the tax haven part of this article. I concede that this is extremely sus and really has no conceivable (to me) explanation. I do find it odd that there seems to be very little news about this. I also find it strange that, if Collegeboard is a hedge fund as accused, that the Collegeboard leadership hasn't cashed out yet. There just seems to be something very sus around this entire topic, yet I found it in Collegeboard's official tax reports. I do commend and applaud the person who discovered this; I can't imagine the determination of someone that they go deep enough into tax records to discover this.

I also find it crazy the way they manage some of their tests. For instance, how could it take such a long time to return scores last year, when everything was digital? Not only was there no shipping time for anything, there was the ability to automatically process and score the MCQ, not to mention no slow down in FRQ scoring from bad hand writing. In addition, the Collegeboard could filter out obvious duds in FRQs by word count, reducing the grading time. Also, for the digital SAT, how can it take 4 months to score a digital SAT? There is literally no FRQ nor human input in scoring it. Perhaps it is the curve? Even then, that shouldn't take that long as CB should already have a precedent for what they want the score distribution to look like. What I think is the most egregious part is that it seems like the digital SAT adjusted the questions as one went along (based on what my friends read about it). Thus they must've been scoring us AS WE DID IT. They could've done something as simple as tell us how many we missed or something at the end. Instead, we have to wait until August for what seems to be no reason.

Another criticism is of how they approach education. CB has a philosophy more oriented around critical-thinking as the role of education. I can't really think of any other way to build critical thinking skills other than by practicing critical thinking. Yet CB locks very tightly behind bars AP MCQ questions. IMO, these are the best way of building up these kind of skills as the time pressure and diverse and varying problems really provide a powerful force to grow critical thinking skills. Thus I find it very contradictory to their recent policy of providing more resources (AP Classroom, AP daily, more detailed metadata on AP scores, etc.) that they don't provide very many MCQs. Even the ones they do provide, they are very esoteric and essentially require finding them through a third-party website (such as PrepScholar).

I also dislike the very simplistic scoring model they adopt. The only 5 possible scores provide very little nuance to evaluate the abilities of the student. For instance, a passing on the Physics C E&M test is around 12 out of 35 questions. One can literally get more questions wrong than right and still pass the test. Even the 5 bar is quite low, at around 51/90. I think this doesn't really allow for a 5 to represent actually knowledge of the material as well as messing with the really, really talented people. Thus I think perhaps a score out of 6 or something would allow for recognition of these people (unfortunately it wouldn't help me though). I think this is part of the reason why many colleges like UChicago and the obvious Ivies are very stringent with AP credits: the rigor. I remember a remark a friend made on how a 5 on the BC test really didn't show that much mastery of the content considering the magnitude of the curve, which is made even worse by the lack of proofs.

[1] https://thecriticalreader.com/the-college-board-is-a-non-profit-its-also-a-hedge-fund/