College Board urged to cancel special August SAT

The College Board was urged Monday to cancel a scheduled Aug. 3 administration of the SAT for a select group of ‘gifted and talented’ students enrolled in a $4,500 college prep program, the Washington Post reports. The request to the College Board, which owns the SAT, was sent by educational consultant Elizabeth A. Stone and Robert A. Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, known as FairTest. The College Board recently made a deal with the Society for the Gifted and Talented for a select group of students enrolled in an expensive three-week summer program at Amherst College called University Prep. Eight days of the program are devoted to college admissions test prep, with students taking two practice exams. Critics blasted the College Board for agreeing to this special arrangement in large part because the SAT is meant to be a democratizing college admissions exam that supposedly gives less advantaged students a chance to shine…

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What should—and shouldn’t—be in Senate No Child Left Behind bill

This Tuesday, leaders of the Senate Health Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are expected to introduce a “base bill” draft for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, the current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, says Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, for the Washington Post. After several days of public comment, the committee will hold a “markup” session in which they consider amendments to the draft…

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Opinion: Teachers get little say in a book about them

Can an education reform movement that demeans and trivializes teachers succeed? It’s hard to imagine, but that is what is going on in parts of America today, the New York Times reports. In Steven Brill’s new book celebrating the movement, “Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America’s Schools,” teachers are literally the least of it. Of the three million who work in traditional public schools, three are interviewed by Mr. Brill on the record; their insights take up six of the book’s 437 pages. Nor do charter school teachers fare much better…

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