Petition to Stop the " National College Access Act"

[Sestak]

My thoughts on this are kind of scattered, but...the main thing here for me is that if nationalization is something we are doing here, then it’s at the very least something that we need to get absolutely right on one go. And I’m not sure about that here.

First of all, the move being made in this bill appears to be replacing the SAT with a new test while eliminating the AP program entirely; which personally I feel should be the other way around; the single test score is far more useless than a program which at least provides some consistent level of higher tier teaching (even if the curriculum is not done the best way). As Truman said, the main issue with AP is that it very actively encourages “teaching for the test”, which is almost never a great way of teaching. Modifying/changing the AP to fix this would be something I strongly support; eliminating it because of a belief that every single student should have to take the exact same classes at the same levels is something I believe is wrong and extremely authoritarian.

The problem with CB is technically not even that it exists or that it’s programs exist: I see it’s problems as threefold.

1. It’s a test which nearly every competitive college requires you to take for a chance at admission, and you have to take their test (or ACT’s) creating a monopoly/duopoly. For AP it’s an extremely strong monopoly as colleges in the US/Atlasia don’t really play that nice with IB/A-levels/etc. The monopolies here are perpetuated by both public and private colleges.

2. Despite this, CB/ACT etc. are completely unaccountable organizations, so the students of Atlasia are basically bound by whatever they choose to test, however they choose to hold then, etc

3. Despite being ostensibly a nonprofit, they charge high fees for their exams ($50 for SATs, close to $100 for each AP), while paying million dollar salaries to their top executives while still ending up with a reasonably large surplus (which in this case we have another name for in the business world which they aren’t really supposed to have).


I mean, if we are concerned about too sweeping a solution, a potential alternative from the federal level I propose is this: the federal goverment creates their own tear and then requires that all colleges must accept the federal test in lieu of the SAT or any other such exam if am applying student so chooses. This still allows flexibility, and allows the regions to still set up their own testing; and for those who will inevitably say “but government testing is bad” the other alternatives will still exist; while now having to actually be accoutable in order to maintain relevance. The monopoly/duopoly situation is of course completely overrun by the fact that universities must also accept the new test.

Again, my thoughts are scattered so I may say more later; this is what I have for now though.