There is no doubt the advent of ap courses has advanced the level of education among students in the United States. However, the corporation that runs the AP program, the College Board, has created a monopoly and completely changed the way CHS and other schools have administered and applied college-level material, and not always for the better.

The College Board also appears to only be in the education business to make money. The SAT has been altered for the purpose of making bank because the ACT had been making more money. Not only did it alter the SAT, but it also managed to lose 5000 PSAT tests with scores that correlate with the new SAT and delayed the scores from being passed out in schools.

The word of the College Board is always “the right one” despite any controversy. If there are any discrepancies, no care is given. What it says goes, and it will do nothing but harm if anything tries to stop it. According to CNN, February of last year, the College Board threatened to remove all AP courses in Oklahoma because the state attempted to take the course of AP U.S. History because it didn’t want students to learn about the “bad of America.”

The grading systems regarding the College Board are also so secretive and pretentious that somehow teachers at our very own school cannot understand them. Teachers are not just guided by the coursework, but are bound to all decisions made by the corporation despite any controversies.

And finally, all standardized testing is monitored and changed because of College Board changes. Although this might not always be seen as a bad thing, it is ultimately confusing to students because of the frequent changes and because of time consuming tests that have been statistically proven by the Education Leadership foundation to not dictate how well students are doing in school.

The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach Gabby Perelmuter at [email protected].