 | David Coleman BiographyDavid Coleman is the ninth president of the College Board, a mission-driven, not-for-profit organization that connects students to college success and opportunity. Founded in 1900, the College Board is today made up of more than 6,000 educational institutions, including schools, school districts, colleges and universities. |
Coleman grew up in a family of educators and has followed them into the field. He went to public school in New York City before enrolling at Yale University. At Yale, he taught reading to secondary school students from low-income families in New Haven and started Branch, an innovative community service program that worked with students at an inner-city New Haven high school. Based on the success of Branch, Coleman received a Rhodes Scholarship, which he used to study English literature at Oxford and classical educational philosophy at Cambridge. He returned to work at McKinsey & Company for five years, where he led much of the firm’s pro bono work in education.
Together with a team of educators, Coleman then founded the Grow Network, an organization committed to making assessment results truly useful for teachers, parents and students. The Grow Network delivered breakthrough quality reports for parents and teachers as well as individualized learning guides for students. Based on the success of Grow, McGraw-Hill acquired the organization in 2005.
Coleman left McGraw-Hill in 2007 and co-founded Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit that assembles educators and researchers to design actions based on evidence to improve student outcomes. Student Achievement Partners played a leading role in developing the Common Core State Standards in math and literacy, a process that drew on the input of teachers, states, higher education, business leaders and researchers from across the country. As a founding partner, Coleman led Student Achievement Partners’ work with teachers and policymakers to achieve the promise of the Common Core State Standards. He left Student Achievement Partners in the fall of 2012 to become president of the College Board.
Coleman was named to the 2013 Time 100, the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has been recognized as one of Time magazine’s "11 Education Activists for 2011" and was one of the NewSchools Venture Fund Change Agents of the Year for 2012.