In 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proved that the College Board has a political agenda. Pointing to an AP course on Black history for high schoolers, Gov. DeSantis showed the course taught topics of queer theory and the abolition of prisons, two ideas that both contradict state law and the intention of a course on Black history.
When the state requested the College Board “modify any courses that conflict with the new Florida rule restricting teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom through 12th grade,” the College Board replied stating that it “will not modify [its] courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics.”
The College Board not only believes it has the right, but also the duty to dictate the curriculum of AP courses, claiming it knows what is “essential” to student development.
The College Board is the one company that controls what every college-bound high school student is learning. The College Board is an unaccountable private vendor, which administered more than 7 million AP and SAT test to high school students in 2024. With no competition, the College Board has been integrated into the everyday studies of high school students around the country. Its main goal: administering as many tests as possible. Since no other private company has this much control over education, the College Board is in a position to restrict parents’ right to know and to choose what their student learns.
And parents should be worried.
The control the College Board exerts is leading education down a slippery slope. It is lowering educational standards, forcing students to waste time on unapplicable courses, and perpetuating a cycle of increased student dependence. Its real goal is testing as many students as possible, resulting in revenues of more than $1 billion, rather than creating tests and curriculum that meet the quality of education students and parents deserve.
How has this happened?
The College Board has entrenched itself into the education system around the country, and state laws are to blame. Texas state statutes have made College Board one of the only private vendors written into the K-12 code, and the law cites the College Board’s AP courses as preparatory courses “that incorporate[…] all topics specified by the College Board on its standard syllabus for a given subject area.”
Texas has relinquished control of the curriculum, leaving the College Board responsible for educational standards. The College Board’s curriculum is proprietary, meaning the curriculum is unalterable by teachers or the state. This steals away parents’ rights to challenge the state on curriculum, and even encourages schools to ignore state standards for the College Board’s own. The College Board’s “right,” given to it by law, to dictate what students are taught, is a dangerous precedent for education.
Additionally, the negative impacts of the College Board’s lack of competition and unchecked power are evident in the College Board’s recent modifications to the SAT. The SAT is now a computer-based test with adaptive questions, in which students’ prior performance on questions dictates the difficulty of questions in later sections of the test.
This change inflates the scores of students who would otherwise do poorly on the exam. The College Board’s grade inflation furthers the narrative of “college for all.” The College Board’s interest is no longer in educational standards, but the number of tests administered.
This lack of both accountability and competition also bucks the trend towards school choice programs across the country, now encompassing 34 states. High school students in the state of Texas, for example, have no choice but to work with the College Board’s Advanced Placement (AP) courses. This is not true school choice.
Students are encouraged to take these classes because passing the AP exam with a “3” or higher score transfers at the end of the year to many colleges for course credit. While the state also offers dual credit courses, the College Board is the only private vendor able to offer similar opportunities.
For many, the College Board is the only option. We must provide more options for students.
By providing students more options, the education system will become a free market that challenges and strengthens students’ abilities, rather than catering to the falling standards set by the College Board. This will restore parents’ rights and lead to genuine, rigorous standards in education.
