College Board is a wealthy monopoly
People wait to board a train at Long Island Rail RoadÕs Jamaica Station, Friday, August 13, 2021. The LIRR is now requiring masks on trains and indoor platforms, as compliance has been at times not 100 percent, but the rail road is addressing the issue with series of announcements and in person offers of masks for those at station facilities... Credit: Craig Ruttle
College Board is a wealthy monopoly
We read "LI schools No. 1 in college-level instruction" [News, Jan. 11]. Isn't it about time someone called out the College Board, which administers Advanced Placement tests taken by Long Island high school students, for what it truly is — a not-for-profit monopoly? In 2019, the last year for which the College Board supplies figures, 5,098,815 AP exams were administered. The current cost to students for taking a single AP Exam is $96. Do the math. The bottom line comes to nearly half a billion dollars annually. This is exactly why the College Board so ardently favors "open enrollment" in AP courses at Long Island high schools. And why do Long Island high schools persist in their love affair with "open enrollment" in AP courses? Because annual high school rankings, such as those published by U.S. News & World Report, base much of those rankings on the number of students who take AP exams and earn qualifying scores. A thinking individual might want to ask who truly benefits from "open enrollment" in AP courses.
Jim Incorvaia, Westbury
The writer is a former AP English teacher at Harborfields High School in Greenlawn.
LIRR should enforce mask mandates
Three days into Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s tenure, the editorial board criticizes his refusal to enforce the mask mandate ["Blakeman needs reality check," Editorial, Jan. 5]. Why hasn’t the board recently and repeatedly criticized the Long Island Rail Road’s refusal to enforce its mask mandate?
Lack of enforcement has the same effect as no mandate. The board should repeatedly pressure the LIRR to have plainclothes LIRR police conduct random sweeps, ticketing offenders.
It is incomprehensible that the LIRR has no meaningful enforcement despite the most highly contagious COVID-19 variant and escalating infection rates. (Yet, the LIRR does not understand why ridership does not increase.) Every day, I change my seat to stay away from the increasing number of maskless riders. The only reason I have not contracted the virus on the LIRR is because of my KN-95 mask.
Michael Sullivan, Garden City
