[ti:Stanley Kaplan: Remembering a Test Prep Pioneer]
[ar:Steve Ember]
[al:Education Report]
[by:www.21voa.com]
[00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English 
[00:03.37]Education Report.
[00:05.11]Here is a question 
[00:07.32]for a college admissions test. 
[00:09.61]Who was Stanley Kaplan? 
[00:12.10]Did he 
[00:14.03]A) start a test preparation company, 
[00:16.88]B) start the test preparation industry, 
[00:21.21]or C) die last month at age ninety? 
[00:25.68]The correct answer is 
[00:27.67]D) all of the above.
[00:30.56]Stanley Kaplan was an educator 
[00:33.35]and private tutor. 
[00:35.40]In the nineteen forties, 
[00:37.39]he began preparing students 
[00:39.23]for the Scholastic Aptitude Test, 
[00:42.17]now just called the SAT.
[00:44.65]His parents were European immigrants 
[00:48.09]who did not go to college, 
[00:50.49]and he himself was rejected 
[00:53.37]from medical school. 
[00:55.12]He thought all Americans 
[00:57.50]should have an equal chance 
[00:59.71]at the best colleges, 
[01:01.66]not just children of wealthy families.
[01:04.75]These days, 
[01:06.34]more students go to college. 
[01:09.03]Yet wealthier families 
[01:11.73]are the ones best able 
[01:13.87]to pay for test preparation. 
[01:16.51]Many programs cost up to
[01:19.09]one thousand dollars or more, 
[01:21.62]though some are available 
[01:23.92]for poor families.
[01:26.06]Parents may hate the whole idea, 
[01:29.30]but they feel nervous seeing others doing it. 
[01:33.04]Then, after college, 
[01:35.52]there are graduate admissions tests 
[01:38.13]to prepare for.
[01:39.78]How much do American spend 
[01:42.27]on this largely unsupervised industry? 
[01:45.85]At least one billion dollars a year, 
[01:49.25]estimates David Hawkins 
[01:51.39]at the National Association 
[01:53.48]for College Admission Counseling. 
[01:56.32]The research company Outsell 
[01:59.06]puts the amount at two and a half billion.
[02:02.55]The two biggest providers 
[02:05.04]in the United States 
[02:06.75]-- Kaplan and Princeton Review 
[02:09.53]-- both operate in more than twenty countries.
[02:13.86]Thirty years ago, 
[02:15.41]the Federal Trade Commission found 
[02:18.13]that Stanley Kaplan's program 
[02:20.42]could raise SAT scores 
[02:23.46]-- but only by about twenty-five points. 
[02:26.95]The association for college admission 
[02:30.23]counseling recently 
[02:32.03]found a thirty-point increase 
[02:34.77]with Kaplan and other programs.
[02:37.67]Still, the group says this is not enough 
[02:42.01]to make a difference for most students. 
[02:45.39]It might help some get into a top college, 
[02:49.57]but only if they have above-average scores 
[02:53.45]in the first place. 
[02:55.35]The report suggested saving money 
[02:58.43]by considering "less costly forms" 
[03:01.47]of test preparation.
[03:03.52]Now, more about our story last week 
[03:07.35]on President Obama's 
[03:09.14]nationally broadcast speech to students. 
[03:12.71]We noted that many conservatives 
[03:16.05]raised objections before the speech. 
[03:19.43]But in nineteen ninety-one, 
[03:22.37]Democrats accused President George H.W. Bush 
[03:27.45]of using the last such speech 
[03:30.14]for political purposes.
[03:32.59]Then as now, Democrats led Congress. 
[03:37.07]They demanded an investigation. 
[03:39.51]It found no misuse of public money 
[03:43.29]to support the speech.
[03:45.78]And that's the VOA Special English 
[03:49.16]Education Report, 
[03:50.85]written by Nancy Steinbach. 
[03:52.90]I'm Steve Ember.