What happens when a single private corporation, cloaked in the guise of public service, becomes the arbiter of what students learn about their nation’s past? The College Board, the billion-dollar entity behind the Advanced Placement program, has quietly transformed from a gatekeeper of academic rigor to an unelected authority that implements conformity in how American high school students understand history.
Conceived to admit high-achieving students at elite universities, the College Board has expanded its reach over decades and transformed into what can be described as the de facto overseer of American education, as recounted in a recent report by the Goldwater Institute.
Today, the AP program dominates the landscape of secondary education, exerting a powerful influence over curricula, approaches in the classroom and, most critically, the interpretation of history. Nearly impossible for parents to challenge, the College Board increasingly resembles an unchecked bureaucracy, wielding its authority as a modern-day censorship board, selecting content that reflects the ideological biases of its leadership with scant regard for the consequences to students or the nation’s future.
The College Board’s 2014 AP U.S. history curriculum overhaul, ostensibly designed to modernize historical instruction, drew a sharp rebuke from scholars alarmed by its ideological slant. In a 2015 letter signed by more than 50 historians, academic critics charged that the framework subtly but unmistakably reshaped the narrative of the American past by diminishing the significance of national ideals, downplaying U.S. leadership on the world stage, and subordinating national history, warts and all, to an amorphous, transnational perspective.
By reorienting the study of history around abstractions such as “identity” and “human geography” while marginalizing the Constitution and other foundational principles, the revised framework, they warned, imposed an official, monopolistic interpretation of the past that parents, educators or policymakers could not easily challenge.
The historians’ broader critique underscored the inherent dangers of the College Board’s unchecked influence. With no real competition, the organization has wielded extraordinary power in determining what students learn. This power imposes an ideologically driven vision of history rather than fostering genuine academic understanding. Left-leaning resources such as Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” have flooded American education for decades. Yet, the Goldwater Institute’s research reveals that the College Board has wielded its “course audits” to reject teachers’ use of more traditional narratives of U.S. history, such as Wilfred McClay’s “Land of Hope,” despite the text’s accolades from many of the nation’s most prestigious scholars.
This ideological gatekeeping has coincided with a disturbing decline in civic literacy, as fewer Americans can articulate fundamental constitutional principles or name basic First Amendment rights. Far from fostering an informed citizenry, the College Board’s dominance may accelerate the erosion of national identity and civic confidence.
Although the College Board’s fundamental purpose is to identify and promote students’ academic merit, the organization has instead embraced the belief that racial identity supersedes academic achievement. It has publicly condemned the Supreme Court’s 2023 elimination of racial discrimination in college admissions.
Over a decade since the historians’ letter, the College Board’s grip on American education remains ironclad. More than half of U.S. states provide financial support for AP exam fees, and nearly 20 states mandate that public colleges accept passing AP scores for college credit. The widespread support from state governments locks in the College Board’s control, giving students, teachers and schools little choice. It’s a vicious cycle: State funding leads to lobbying, increasing state funding. While distinguished, competing programs such as the International Baccalaureate remain dwarfed by the College Board’s financial and logistical firm grip.
The dominance has proved lucrative for those at the top of the educational power structure. Although the College Board operates as a nonprofit, it functions like a billion-dollar enterprise. In 2022, it reported more than $1 billion in revenue and paid its CEO over $2 million, nearly 30 times the median salary of a high school teacher. That was before the organization received a hefty fine last year for illegally selling student data.
State policymakers must confront this imbalance in control over our schools. By continuing to privilege the College Board through subsidies and mandates, states fund indoctrination by a centralized, unaccountable private entity that has embraced toxic left-wing ideology. Florida’s recent efforts to diversify its options by promoting alternative college MB1-level exams provide a promising template for reclaiming control over its educational systems while maintaining rigorous academic standards and promoting critical thinking.
The fight against entrenched educational monopolies and their capture by left-leaning activists has grown more urgent over the past few years. After the National School Boards Association labeled concerned parents as participants in “forms of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” several states withdrew their membership and redirected resources toward organizations better aligned with their educational goals. A similar reevaluation of the College Board’s outsized role in American education is long overdue.
Opening the marketplace for college-level examinations, whether through expanding existing alternatives or creating state-led initiatives, offers a pathway to greater choice, competition and better-prepared students.
Timothy K. Minella is a senior fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy. Carl Paulus is a senior writer for the Goldwater Institute.
This article was originally published in the Washington Times.
