<p>No matter how endorsed by the public schools they are, they would receive even less of their business if colleges weren't accepting the results. Some colleges have already started to limit the number or types of AP results, and a continuing trend in that direction will hurt the growth of the AP program tremendously as well.</p>
<p>But I think the argument about the endorsement of schools (and I don't limit this to public, as many of the private schools use them just as often and effectively) making it a public matter is off-point. There are many, many issues that are a significant part of the public education, some of which are not within the discretion of the public.</p>
<p>For instance, No Child Left Behind mandates that military branches have access to student lists for recruitment purposes, a measure which has met with some controversy when discovered by the public. Yet, the public has very little recourse in a manner such as this, as it is part of legislation, and challenging the legislation in court would be prohibitively costly. It would also probably be ineffective to challenge such legislation with the presence of its opt-out clause, if you know about it.</p>
<p>But even in the more day-to-day issues of public schools, how much do you have a right to know? Do you have a right to know how tests are created? Do you have a right to in-depth reasoning as to how the tests are scored? Do you have a right to know how or if assessments are curved? Or why?</p>
<p>And at what point do we say, "Hey, this is something that we have professionals doing, we should let them do their job."?</p>
<p>Education is kind of a funny thing. Everybody's been in school, therefore everybody feels inclined to be some kind of expert about how schools should be run. This despite the fact that schools have to rapidly adapt to the changing conditions of increased collegiate requirements and technology advancing faster than one could possibly adapt.</p>
<p>Let's take two other functions that the government has: taxes and roads.</p>
<p>When it comes to roads, very few people involve themselves in the process of where roads are created, how they're created, and how wide they will be. Sure, they'll have town meetings sometimes, and some folks are involved in these to get or give input, but these folks are the folks who are directly impacted. Similarly, the AP folks get significant input from the readers at the AP exams, consisting of the high school teachers who teach the courses and the college professors who inherit students who supposedly have mastered these skills. They also ultimately get input from students, based on the quesitons that get answered (or don't) and from the surveys distributed. But what does the average high school student know about these topics, when it comes to writing questions and deciding scoring? I'm guessing this experience is typically pretty limited in the vast majority of cases.</p>
<p>Similarly, when it comes to our tax dollars, while there are "reports" of information regarding their usage, and various watchdog groups that keep an eye on the spending of tax dollars, what do we as private citizens really know? What can we get access to? I think that without a serious amount of digging that there is probably not as much information as we would want on the vast majority of issues. At that point, it's gotten to the point of being beyond the availability of the average taxpayer.</p>
<p>Should this be the case? Perhaps not. Is it the case? I'm afraid so.</p>
<p>So while I think it's a noble idea that the public should have the availability to be involved in a number of "public" affairs, the public has very limited access to a number of things without a significant investment in time, energy, money, or a combination of these. Some would argue that this is wrong, and I might not entirely disagree with them.</p>
<p>But at the same time, there have to be certain things that are kept from the public (or at least not announced and discussed with the public prior to acting). Not because they lack the intelligence to handle the issue, but rather because the consultation of the public on minor issues simply would take too much time. It's one of the reasons why we have elected officials. </p>
<p>Frankly, I think the College Board shares a fair amount of information regarding their practices, scoring, and methods.</p>
<p>Would knowing the composites make their practices any more effective or meaningful? My take, as much as I would be curious to see them, is that the answer is no.</p>
<p>With apologies for wordiness.</p>