College Board Keeps Apologizing For Screwing Up Digital SAT and AP Tests (arstechnica.com) 22
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Nate Anderson: Don't worry about the "mission-driven not-for-profit" College Board -- it's drowning in cash. The US group, which administers the SAT and AP tests to college-bound students, paid its CEO $2.38 million in total compensation in 2023 (the most recent year data is available). The senior VP in charge of AP programs made $694,662 in total compensation, while the senior VP for Technology Strategy made $765,267 in total compensation. Given such eye-popping numbers, one would have expected the College Board's transition to digital exams to go smoothly, but it continues to have issues.
Just last week, the group's AP Psychology exam was disrupted nationally when the required "Bluebook" testing app couldn't be accessed by many students. Because the College Board shifted to digital-only exams for 28 of its 36 AP courses beginning this year, no paper-based backup options were available. The only "solution" was to wait quietly in a freezing gymnasium, surrounded by a hundred other stressed-out students, to see if College Board could get its digital act together. [...] College Board issued a statement on the day of the AP Psych exam, copping to "an issue that prevented [students] from logging into the College Board's Bluebook testing application and beginning their exams at the assigned local start time." Stressing that "most students have had a successful testing experience, with more than 5 million exams being successfully submitted thus far," College Board nonetheless did "regret that their testing period was disrupted." It's not the first such disruption, though. [...]
College Board also continues to have problems delivering digital testing at scale in a high-pressure environment. During the SAT exam sessions on March 8-9, 2025, more than 250,000 students sat for the test -- and some found that their tests were automatically submitted before the testing time ended. College Board blamed the problem on "an incorrectly configured security setting on Bluebook." The problem affected nearly 10,000 students, and several thousand more "may have lost some testing time if they were asked by their room monitor to reboot their devices during the test to fix and prevent the auto-submit error." College Board did "deeply and sincerely apologize to the students who were not able to complete their tests, or had their test time interrupted, for the difficulty and frustration this has caused them and their families." It offered refunds, plus a free future SAT testing voucher.
Just last week, the group's AP Psychology exam was disrupted nationally when the required "Bluebook" testing app couldn't be accessed by many students. Because the College Board shifted to digital-only exams for 28 of its 36 AP courses beginning this year, no paper-based backup options were available. The only "solution" was to wait quietly in a freezing gymnasium, surrounded by a hundred other stressed-out students, to see if College Board could get its digital act together. [...] College Board issued a statement on the day of the AP Psych exam, copping to "an issue that prevented [students] from logging into the College Board's Bluebook testing application and beginning their exams at the assigned local start time." Stressing that "most students have had a successful testing experience, with more than 5 million exams being successfully submitted thus far," College Board nonetheless did "regret that their testing period was disrupted." It's not the first such disruption, though. [...]
College Board also continues to have problems delivering digital testing at scale in a high-pressure environment. During the SAT exam sessions on March 8-9, 2025, more than 250,000 students sat for the test -- and some found that their tests were automatically submitted before the testing time ended. College Board blamed the problem on "an incorrectly configured security setting on Bluebook." The problem affected nearly 10,000 students, and several thousand more "may have lost some testing time if they were asked by their room monitor to reboot their devices during the test to fix and prevent the auto-submit error." College Board did "deeply and sincerely apologize to the students who were not able to complete their tests, or had their test time interrupted, for the difficulty and frustration this has caused them and their families." It offered refunds, plus a free future SAT testing voucher.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Most require some training, but nothing like a four-year degree.
And many have paid apprenticeships.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah about that (Score:2)
Oh and you will spend a lot of your own time and money in classes learning the mor
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't like it, and prefer going five or six figures in debt getting a degree that may or may give you saleable job skills rather than being paid while you learn? That seems to be what you're saying. Couldn't be bothered to read more than the first paragraph or so, since you didn't seem to actually have anything to say.
Abusing the nonprofit tax exempt status (Score:2)
They have $1 billion in assets and sell over $1 billion a year and make $45 million in profit every year.
Should the nonprofit tax exempt status eventually be evaluated that at some level non-governmental non-profits pay income or asset based taxes?
The figures below are the tax return, that does not even consider what is paid to subcontractors and vendors who may or may not have a link to the College Board or its staff.
College Board 2023 numbers from ProPublica nonprofit explorer
https://projects.propublica.o [propublica.org]
Bullshit (Score:2)
The College Board is awful (Score:2)
Terrible tests that distort learning.
High costs.
Incompetence.
Deals with schools to milk more money out of students.
Naive (Score:2)
The senior VP in charge of AP programs made $694,662 in total compensation, while the senior VP for Technology Strategy made $765,267 in total compensation. Given such eye-popping numbers, one would have expected the College Board's transition to digital exams to go smoothly
Thinking that paying your executives a lot of money will guarantee a well run organization is as naive as thinking that grades are a guarantee of intelligence.
Re: (Score:2)
If anything, high salaries for execs suggests that the organization is run by people who are far more interested in money than in the organization's mission. Money, and only money.
We swear (Score:2)
This thing usually works!
ACT? IB? (Score:2)
When I was applying to college I took both the SAT and the ACT (just in case). Although I didn't take any IB courses, I knew people who did. I just took AP classes... up until I figured out that I could take the test without wasting my time taking the actual class. Another thing I didn't figure out until much later was I could have taken more community college classes (either concurrently during the school year, or in the summer) and used that to get more transferable college credit when I went to a 4 ye
Re: (Score:2)
It's cheaper.
They don't need to secure the paper test materials anymore to prevent someone from leaking a copy of the test and invalidating a whole season's worth of test results.
No more scan-trons to process for scoring, so they don't need purchase, scan, and then dispose of the answer sheets.
They can enable things like adaptive tests, which theoretically results in a more representative scoring (assuming you didn't flub your first couple of questions badly). This also has the side benefit of making the q
The Actual Psych test. (Score:2)
Just last week, the group's AP Psychology exam was disrupted nationally when the required "Bluebook" testing app couldn't be accessed by many students.
In related news, a new type of psychological test was deployed last week on Psychology students..
Pencil-and-paper days had problems too (Score:1)
In the previous century, back in the paper-and-number-2-pencil days, there were logistical problems with standardized tests.
Usually they were things like a natural disaster or a power failure/HVAC outage or other issue at a the testing center. These kinds of issues were "well known" and the College Board had backup plans.
student loan bankruptcy is needed to fix the Colle (Score:2)
student loan bankruptcy is needed to fix the College system.
Way to much high paid admin boat driving costs up.
How can I make this AI's fault? (Score:1)
Isn't AI the root cause of every screw up, because by definition humans are perfect and can't screw up in ways that AI does?
And to the someone who complained of AI ripping off computer books, how long will those books remain relevant anyhow? Just how short-term is your horizon? What if you had a basic income and didn't need college?
Yeah okay (Score:1)
Back in 1997 I took a computerized SAT at a Prometric site on account of someone thought I was smart enough for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
Spoiler alert: I wasn't on account of being a kid and not having it all click in my head yet.
Other spoiler alert: computerized SATs were a thing almost 30 years ago, back when you could say "computerized" with a straight face.