David Coleman (education)

Personal biography

Coleman was born in Manhattan to a Jewish family. David Coleman's father is a psychiatrist; his mother, Elizabeth Coleman, was from 1987 to 2013 the president of Bennington College in Vermont. At the time Coleman was growing up, his mother was Dean of The New School in downtown Manhattan. The family moved to Vermont when David was in college.

Education and early career

Coleman attended PS 41, a public elementary school in New York City's Greenwich Village; the O. Henry Intermediate School (IS 70) on West 17th Street; and the selective Stuyvesant High School. He participated in the Stuyvesant debate team, and, along with his debating partner and fellow-student Hanna Rosin, now a journalist and author, won numerous debates. As an undergraduate at Yale University, Coleman participated in the Ulysses S. Grant tutoring program in reading for inner-city New Haven high school students, in conjunction with which he started Branch, a community service program for inner city students. While tutoring predominantly lower-income black and Latino high school students in English poetry, Coleman professed himself surprised that "thirty years after the civil-rights movement, none of these students were close—not even close—to being ready for Yale. They'd had so little practice with commanding difficult text [sic]."

Coleman graduated in 1991 [?] with a B.A. in philosophy from Yale. Partly on the strength of his undergraduate volunteer activism, Coleman was the recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship (1991) to take courses in English literature at University College, Oxford. He also studied classical philosophy at Cambridge University. During his stay in England Coleman met Jason Zimba, a graduate of Williams College and a fellow Rhodes Scholar, who was studying mathematics and physics. The two became good friends and future business partners. Zimba, who would receive his doctorate in Mathematical Physics from Berkeley in 2001, went on to become a professor at Bennington College, of which Coleman's mother was president. Coleman returned to New York City intending to work as a high school English teacher, but, according to Todd Balf of the New York Times Magazine, when he realised he wouldn't find a job in the field, he became a consultant at McKinsey & Company. While there, he did some pro-bono work for school districts trying to improve performance.

In partnership with his fellow Rhodes Scholar Jason Zimba, Coleman then founded The Grow Network, an internet-based consulting organisation that analysed test scores for states and large school districts. In 2001, Coleman and Zimba's Grow Network negotiated contracts directly with Pennsylvania, California, Nevada, New Mexico and New Jersey as well as New York City and Chicago public school districts. In 2004 McGraw-Hill Education, the digital educational division of the The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. financial and publishing conglomerate, purchased the Grow Network for an undisclosed sum and renamed it Grow Network/McGraw-Hill. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

In 2007 Coleman and Zimba together with educational analyst Sue Pimentel co-founded Student Achievement Partners (SAP), a non-profit organisation which researches and develops "achievement based" assessment standards. Funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Achievement Partners played a leading role in developing the Common Core State Standards in math and literacy, which focus on "in-depth learning, knowledge across different disciplines, and strong math skills." When Coleman left Student Achievement Partners in October 2012 to head the College Board, Zimba and Susan Pimentel continued to lead Student Achievement Partners, which is now devoted to facilitating the implementation of the Common Core Standards.

The Common Core

In 2009 the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers launched an initiative to write Common Core State Standards for elementary through high school English Language Arts and Mathematics. The Common Core State Standards aim to prepare students for college and careers by identifying the skills students should learn from kindergarten through high school. David Coleman was on the English Language Arts writing team, which was chaired by Student Achievement Partners co-founder Sue Pimentel. Coleman's friend and Student Achievement Partners co-founder Jason Zimba was a leader on the Mathematics writing team. As of June 2014, the standards have been adopted by 44 states. Other states have not adopted the standards, or have adopted them temporarily then later backed away from adoption.

Since Coleman's departure to head the College Board, Student Achievement Partners has continued to support implementation of the Common Core standards. The Common Core has created a national market for book publishers and test developers. Beginning in the 2014 to 2015 school year, US primary and high schools will begin using standardised exams closely aligned with the new Common Core's standards. Overall reaction to the implementation of Common Core has been mixed, with some criticism by Democratic-leaning groups (e.g. that Common Core does not mandate any computer literacy skillset) and differing criticism by Republican-leaning groups (e.g. that Common Core is effectively federalising control of curriculum standards), along with many positive reactions from both types of groups.

The College Board

On 16 May 2012 the College Board chose Coleman as its president for SAT. Coleman has made it a priority for the College Board to expand access to college for minority and low-income students who have demonstrated college potential. In 2014, Coleman and the College Board announced a redesign of the SAT slated for spring 2016. Changes include no penalty for incorrect answers, removal of obscure vocabulary words, making the essay optional and a partnership with the Khan Academy to provide free test prep resources. The College Board's proposed changes to the SAT were written up in the New York Times Magazine.

Educational reform

Coleman, Ann-Margaret Michael (Coleman's former assistant and current operations manager for Student Achievement Partners), and Jason Zimba were the founding board members of Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst, a lobbying advocacy organisation for "standards driven" educational reform. Coleman's tenure on the board of StudentsFirst ended when he joined the College Board in October 2012.

Honors and financial awards

Coleman was in the 2013 Time 100, Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The encomium was announced in the magazine in an article written by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a prominent supporter of the Common Core State Standards. Coleman was also honoured by NewSchools Venture Fund, which invests in charter schools, as one of its "Change Agents of the Year for 2012".