Curriculum·G701 How to Teach This Material·about 33 min
Assessment that measures instead of certifies
By the end of this lesson you can
- →Distinguish an assessment that measures what a learner can do from one that certifies that a course was completed, and say which one a pass rate reports
- →State the properties of a published pass standard, and explain why a standard the learner cannot read before sitting is not a standard
- →Compute what an advertised placement rate implies against an internal one, per cohort, and what the gap cost each student
- →Design an assessment for a stated decision: the performance, the standard, the evidence, and the route by which a person other than the teacher can verify it
Graduate · enrolled learners
This lesson opens with CFPB v. BloomTech and Austen Allred, 17 April 2024.
- What happened
- The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued an order against BloomTech Inc., the coding school formerly known as Lambda School, and its chief executive Austen Allred. The Bureau found that the school had claimed that 86 percent of students were hired within six months (2017 to 2019) and at least 71 percent from 2019, while its non-public reporting to investors consistently showed rates closer to 50 percent, and for 2020 graduates around 30 percent. It found that the school told students its income share agreements were not loans and carried no finance charge, when they were loans whose finance charge averaged about $4,000 for those who completed repayment, and that it represented its interests as aligned with students' because it was paid only when a graduate earned enough, when it often sold the agreements to investors right after originating them. The order permanently banned BloomTech from consumer lending, banned Allred from student lending for ten years, and imposed civil penalties of $64,235 and $100,000, over $164,000 together, reduced from what the Bureau would otherwise have sought because of the two parties' inability to pay.
- The decision point
- The school's whole pitch was an assessment claim: we only get paid when you get the job, so our numbers are honest. The number that mattered, who got a job, was held by the school, and its own reporting to investors put it at about half the advertised figure. The certificate at the end certified completion; the placement rate was supposed to certify the outcome; and the second was the one the school controlled and misreported. An assessment whose standard is not published, whose evidence the learner cannot see, and whose result only the institution can verify is a certification of the institution's claim about itself. This Academy publishes every pass standard before the learner sits it, and every gate is a performance somebody else can check.
What you will be able to answer
- →What did the CFPB find about BloomTech?
- →Measure versus certify?
- →What are the four parts of an assessment that measures?
- →Why is a pass rate not a measurement of the learner?
Orientation and Year One are open: anyone can read them without an account. From Year Two onward the lessons are for enrolled learners, because progress through the later years only means anything if it is tracked against a record.
It is free. We do not sell the list and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.
Sources and review
- https://www.consumerfinance.gov/enforcement/actions/bloomtech-inc-and-austen-allred/
- https://www.consumerfinance.gov/archive/newsroom/cfpb-takes-action-against-coding-boot-camp-bloomtech-and-ceo-austen-allred-for-deceiving-students-and-hiding-loan-costs/
- https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/17/consumer-financial-protection-bureau-fines-bloomtech-for-false-claims/
- https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_bloomtech-inc-consent-order_2024-04.pdf
- https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_bloomtech-inc-stipulation_2024-04.pdf
Confidence high·Volatility low·Reviewed 2026-09-14·Owner unassigned
Contested
The order was a consent order; in the stipulation BloomTech and Allred consented without admitting or denying the findings. The figures relied on here are the Bureau's findings as published in the order and press release.
The civil penalties were set low because of the respondents' sworn statements of inability to pay. The order holds a further $4,935,765 against BloomTech and $4,900,000 against Allred, due only if those financial statements prove materially false.
The lesson uses a coding school because it is the cleanest documented case of an assessment claim made by the institution about itself. The same structure appears in crypto education, where placement is replaced by 'results', and G703 and G706 take that up directly.