College Board: "Inspiring minds (through monopolistic niche marketing and restriction of freedom of speech)."

Part of an exchange regarding privatized education with my friend:


There's a potential to actually learn something if American education wasn't structured around standardized tests that hardly test what students have learned. The one problem is privatization,the other is lack of competition. Since having multiple corporations compete for administering standardized tests wouldn't work, the government needs to federalize it. Either standardize the tests or standardize the curriculum... and the former would be easier to do.

The rise of College Board is just a phenomenon that occurred because the government failed to intervene. They managed to take advantage of monopolizable niche market and succeeded. Easily. As a result, billions of dollars is pumped out from students and their families to business men claiming to be educators. Standardized tests now govern what material is taught and education in a democratic country once proud of its creative knowledge work force is becoming more corrupt than it already was.

Think of this... Blizzard made SC2 and sold it for $60. They spend money maintaining their servers and making changes in the game as well as moderating Battle.net. Meanwhile, College Board produces what they call a test using previously used material and sells each for $87. Most of the test is graded by machines. This is BS.

School is like prison. Homework is like house arrest.

The one difference is finals and court trials. While one sees if what you did is worth suffering, the other tests if what you suffered was worth doing.