Educational Testing Service

All you want to know about Educational Testing Service

Educational Testing Service
Type	501(c)(3)
Founded	1947
Headquarters	660 Rosedale Rd, Lawrenceville NJ 08648
Website	ets.org

Welcome sign at entrance to ETS headquarters in Lawrence Township

Messick Hall, one of the many buildings at ETS headquarters

Lord Hall, another building at ETS headquarters

Behind Messick and Lord Halls is a lake with fountains in the middle of it

The Educational Testing Service (or ETS) is the world's largest private educational testing and measurement organization, operating on an annual budget of approximately $1.1 billion on a proforma basis in 2007. ETS develops various standardized tests primarily in the United States for K-12 and higher education, but they also administer tests such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language TOEFL, Test of English for International Communication TOEIC, and Graduate Record Examination GRE internationally. Many of the assessments they develop are associated with entry to US tertiary (undergraduate) and quaternary education (graduate) institutions, but they also develop K-12 statewide assessments used for accountability testing in many states, including California, Texas, Tennessee and Virginia.

ETS is a US-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1947 to take over the operation of the Cooperative Test Service of the American Council of Education. Starting in 1937, this organization pioneered the use of mark sense technology and the IBM 805 Test Scoring Machine.^[1] The international headquarters is located on an 376-acre (1.52 km²) campus outside of Princeton, New Jersey in Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey^[2]^[3]^[4]; processing, shipping, customer service and test security is in nearby Ewing. ETS also has a major office in San Antonio, TX, which houses is K-12 Assessment Programs division. The ETS Assessment Training Institute (ATI), located in Portland, Oregon, provides materials and services to teach educators the proper use of assessments. ETS Europe is headquartered in Utrecht in the Netherlands.^[5] ETS employs about 2,700 individuals,^[6] including 240 with doctorates and an additional 350 others with "higher degrees." Work that ETS does that is not associated with its nonprofit educational research mission is conducted by for-profit subsidiaries, such as Prometric, which administers test by computer for licensing and certification in the professional world, and ETS Global BV, which contains much of the international operations of the company.

About 25% of the work carried out by ETS is contracted by the private, not for profit firm, the College Board. The most popular of the College Board's tests is the SAT, taken by more than 3 million students annually. ETS also develops and administers The College Board's Advanced Placement program, which is widely used in US high schools for advanced course credit.

In England and Wales ETS Europe were contracted to operate the National Curriculum assessments on behalf of the government. ETS took over this role from Edexcel in 2008. The first year of their operation was struck by a number of problems, including the late arrival of scripts to examiners, a database of student entries being unavailable,^[7], and countrywide reports of problems with the marking of the papers. The opposition Conservative party has criticised the awarding of the contracts to ETS, and produced a dossier listing previous problems with ETS' service.^[8] Their contract with the QCA was terminated in August 2008: ETS is to pay back £19.5m and cancel invoices worth £4.6m^[9].

1 ETS criticism
2 Tests administered by ETS
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

ETS criticism

ETS has been criticized for being a “highly competitive business operation that is as much multinational monopoly as nonprofit institution”. ^[10] Due to its legal status as a non-profit organization, ETS is exempt from paying federal corporate income tax on many, but not all, of its operations. Furthermore, it does not need to report financial information to the Securities and Exchange Commission. ^[11]

In response to growing criticism of its monopolistic power, New York state passed the Educational Testing Act, a disclosure law which required ETS to make available certain test questions and graded answer sheets to students. ^[12]

Problems administering England's national tests in 2008 by ETS Europe were the subject of thousands of complaints recorded by the Times Educational Supplement.^[13] Their operations were also described as a "shambles" in the UK Parliament, where a financial penalty was called for.^[14] Complaints included papers not being marked properly, or not being marked at all^[15] and papers being sent to the wrong schools or lost completely.^[16] It has even been suggested that the quality of service is so poor that the Department for Education and Skills may not be able to publish the 2008 league tables of school performance.^[17]