College Board

Maryland public high school seniors have one of the highest success rates on Advanced Placement tests in the nation, according to a College Board report released yesterday. The state, which has encouraged school systems to open the AP courses to more minority students and to provide training for more AP teachers, has nearly doubled the number of graduating seniors who are taking the exams from 2000 to 2006. Today, a third of seniors have taken at least one AP course and exam. At the same time, the percentage of graduating seniors who scored 3 or better - the score required by many colleges to receive credit - has risen from 14 percent to 22 percent.

The House of Representatives last week approved a plan to increase federal higher-education spending. The measure moves on to debate in the Senate. The policy's financial planning looks a lot like the stereotypical undergrad's. The College Student Relief Act of 2007 would cut the interest rate on subsidized student loans in half over a period of five years - from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent - effectively shifting the balance of the cost from those students to the general public. The plan would cost taxpayers nearly $6 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The cost of obtaining a four-year university degree continues to outpace inflation, and in an era of declining federal aid students are increasingly relying on private bank loans to finance their education, the College Board said yesterday. The cost of tuition and fees at four-year public universities rose 6.3 percent from 2005 to 2006, capping an increase of 35 percent over five years, the nonprofit board reported. At the same time, the amount of federal financial aid available through Pell Grants hit a new low, the organization said.

In Maryland and across the country, high school seniors got much lower scores on their SATs last academic year - perhaps, officials say, because the new test is longer and fewer students were willing to take it twice to improve their results. The average combined verbal and math score went down 7 points nationwide - the largest single-year drop in three decades - and 11 points in Maryland. The state's decline is attributed to a significant increase in the number of students, especially from Baltimore, who were enrolled in less-rigorous courses when they took the test.

At many colleges, the biggest impact of the mistakes made by the College Board in scoring the October SAT will be on eligibility for scholarships, not on admissions decisions, college officials say. "With admissions, the colleges say they are practicing holistic review," said Donald E. Heller, an associate professor of education at Pennsylvania State University and an expert in student financial aid. "But with scholarships, some use flat cutoff points...

It had to happen sooner or later. Forced to explain the long delay between its discovery of scoring errors on the October SAT and its reporting of them, the College Board once again put its interests ahead of those of applicants and their parents. SAT tests taken by 5,600 students in October were erroneously scored by Pearson Educational Measurement, a firm contracted by the College Board. The board said the errors were caused by rain-damaged test sheets that prevented proper scanning.

Imagine that you're a high school senior on pins and needles waiting to learn if you've been accepted or rejected by colleges, and you hear that the College Board - which administers the SAT - confessed last week to a foul-up in the scoring of a recent exam. Or imagine that you're a high school junior about to subject yourself to the whole arduous process of preparing for and taking the SAT, including a new, somewhat subjectively graded essay section. Feeling more than a little queasy?

A day after the College Board notified colleges that it had misreported the scores of 4,000 students who took the SAT exam in October, an official of the testing organization disclosed that some of the errors were far larger than initially suggested. With college counselors and admissions officials scrambling to take a second look at student scores in the final weeks before they mail out acceptances and rejections, Chiara Coletti, the College Board's vice president for public affairs, said that 16 students out of the 495,000 who took the October exam had scores that should have been more than 200 points higher.

College costs, which became more expensive for many with federal budget cuts enacted this year, have forced more high school students and their parents to consider community college as an economical starting point for a four-year degree. From a value standpoint, it could be a smart spending decision. Thinking about college costs became more important in light of the $12.7 billion slashed from the student loan programs in recent federal budget legislation. Federal loans will carry higher interest rates, adding thousands of dollars to the cost of college for many students, according to estimates.

John Cornillon, an English teacher at Harbor City High School, an alternative school in Baltimore, is one of six teachers in the nation who have been awarded the first College Board Bob Costas Grants for the Teaching of Writing. Cornillon will receive a $2,000 grant for his methods to inspire students and develop their writing skills. He will be recognized Feb. 16 at the College Board's Middle States Regional Forum in Philadelphia. The award was named for Bob Costas, a broadcaster and author, for his work on behalf of the College Board's National Commission on Writing.