Inside the Educational Testing Service-Or the Plot to Multiple- Choice Us from Cradle to Grave
Rodriguez, Eric
Inside ETS - Or the Plot to Multiple-Choice Us Firom Cradle to Grave by Eric Rodriguez The Educational Testing Service (ETS): a) is a non-profit institution; b) makes almost $2 million...
...ACT, which calls ETS the “sleeping giant,” is a leaner, less diversified number two, with roughly one-sixth the staff and one-fifth the budget of ETS...
...Inquiries revealed that extensive and difficult-to-duplicate data submitted by the university to ETS had been accidentally erased from computer tapes-three months earlier...
...As our institutions of higher education, those erstwhile bastions of moral superiority, descend into the hurly-burly of the marketplace, they’ll find ETS-the ETS of the “Rosedale” Princeton “campus,” of the quiet muted earth-tone booklets-already well established there, thoroughly versed in the techniques and values of cutthroat free enterprise, and perhaps even willing to share its expertise, at a modest price...
...ETS shrewdly plays on these insecurities by fostering the notion that use of their services can bolster an academic reputation...
...Following the transfer of the MCAT, the Law School Admission Council, which contracts with ETS for the Law School Admission Test and other admissions programs, approached ACT to discuss possible transfer of the LSAT contract...
...It is hoped,” explains the brochure, “that additional colleges and universities will join this consortium [italics added] ; their names will be added to successive editions of this list...
...An American studying at Oxford applied early to Harvard Law School on its rolling admission plan under which students are accepted in waves rather than all at once...
...Asked to elaborate, he explained that the relationship seemed so “murky” and “ad hoc-ish,” that in practice he scarcely distinguished between the two groups...
...The eight which used LSDAS never received her records...
...They can improve a “prediction index” derived from such measures of performance as grade average and rank in class, but, “Do you need that additional refinement...
...This independence releases ETS from any responsibility to its ultimate client, the test-taker...
...This educational “R&D” work has been a key growth area for ETS...
...She applied to nine law schools...
...A former president of the CEEB described this arrangement as a “contract in perpetuity...
...ETS has repackaged the old tests that weeded students out for the Vassar admissions office and now offers the tests and a host of other services to help students decide where to go to college and what to do with their careers...
...Consequently, the older Eastern institution is now looking to its younger Midwestern counterpart for guidance in redefining its role...
...The Commission recommended that “a symmetry or balance should exist between the services that the CEEB offers to potential entrants and those that it offers to colleges...
...The most intriguing question in this story is why ETS’ will-to-grow surprises us...
...The demographics are difficult enough for ETS, but the trend that must seem even more pernicious is the spread of open admissions policies, which often makes completion of high school the only requirement for college acceptance...
...the “software” for this computer interaction guidance service is being funded under a National Science Foundation grant...
...Nonetheless, the CEEB examination program remains ETS’ best-selling product...
...The commercial firms active in the field (such as Science Research Associates, Houghton Mifflin Company, and Westinghouse Learning Corporation) find themselves at a severe disadvantage bidding on contracts against ETS...
...You score 800 and probably will get to attend “the college of your choice” if you answered “e) all of the above...
...ACT produces the exam used by the less selective state colleges and universities, especially those in the Midwest, while ETS has always had a definite Eastern bias...
...This problem is directly linked to a decrease in college applications due to lowered birthrates during the 1950s, the end of the need for a draft deferment, and a small, but steady, decline in the social pressure to “get into a good school...
...The “college entry crunch” of the last two decades has subsided, and while competition has increased among candidates for law and medical schools, the over-all demand for educational testing has undoubtedly fallen...
...The federal government is helping pick up the tab for this program...
...Today, there are 500,OOO‘vacancies on college campuses for the current school year...
...There is some feeling that ETS has violated this clause, in spirit at least, by reusing, or recasting, materials originally developed for CEEB-as when ETS adapted the Financial Need Analysis Report system, designed for a CEEB council, for the Graduate and Professional School Financial Aid Service, a program administered by ETS for an association of graduate institutions...
...In fiscal 1972, ETS grossed $47.9 million-not enough to put it on the Fortune 500 list, but enough to equal the budget of a medium-sized university...
...To be sure, CEEB itself no longer focuses its attention exclusively on that small interval between high school and college in which students and schools make their choices...
...Even more enlightening questions remain to be asked about other aspects of ETS’ performance, especially about how it has responded in its recent role as an imperiled institution...
...ETS cannot retain any profit or pay dividends, but that does not prevent it from building up a cash-flow “surplus” that many businesses would envy...
...Indeed, people do shuttle back and forth between ETS and CEEB as readily as they might between different branches in the same corporation...
...If ETS wants to increase the demand for its test, the selling job goes on in college administrative offices, and the captive student never really has any choice in the matter...
...The scores are not used by the admissions office, rather they are required to create the impression that the school is on a par with more selective institutions where the College Boards still play an important role in determining who will enter the freshman class...
...Within five years the number of projects had more than doubled to 241 annually, and the payments had tripled to $5.5 millionabout 11 per cent of ETS’ revenues...
...ETS has done this by diversifying into new activities, by fighting hard to retain jurisdiction over threatened areas, and by generating a demand for products no one knew he needed before...
...But that market is shrinking...
...ACT produced a coup of major dimensions when it recently won the contract for the Basic Education Opportunity Grant from the federal government, a contract ETS was already counting as its own...
...But don’t be discouraged if you didn’t score in a high percentile on this littIe test...
...Not satisfied with this minimum of guaranteed business, ETS pressures member institutions to use more than one service...
...To guarantee a steady stream of research “requests,” ETS maintains a six-person Washington office where staffers pore over publications like the Commerce Business Daily, looking for contracts on which to bid...
...Nor is ETS above junketing potential clients...
...In the crass world of private enterprise this $1.9 million would be called profit and be subject to taxes...
...Recycling with Elan Diversification into other forms of research is not the only strategy ETS has developed to combat “test volume decline...
...And this is just the beginning: David Nolan, director of the Washington office of ETS, described a program now in the R&D stage which would enable the student to “interact” with a computer on a “real time” basis, feeding information about himself into the computer, and retrieving answers to questions about his future academic career...
...ETS calls the relationship a “dialogue,” but a CEEB staffer comes a good deal closer when he speaks of a “symbiotic dependency...
...ACT, which traditionally served admissions offices more concerned with counseling and placement than with selection of students, has responded more nimbly than ETS to changed circumstances, especially the open-admissions problem...
...The deadline for applications had not passed, and LSDAS assured him that his records would be forwarded immediately...
...Despite ETS’ near monopoly position, its publications are redolent with the ethos of venture capitalism...
...The Iowa-based American College Testing Program (ACT), a non-profit corporation founded 15 years ago, is ETS’ closest rival...
...But when ETS operates behind its veil of “non-profit” probity, we spare it the skeptical eye with which we view other organizations...
...But in the non-profit world of ETS, this tax-free $1.9 million surplus is turned into investment capital to fund v e n t u r e s like the Chauncey Conference Center...
...Educational circumstances have changed remarkably in the 27 years since ETS administered its first test...
...In recent years, ETS has, for example, designed tests to measure the vocation-related skills of stockbrokers, realtors, automobile mechanics, housing managers, and golf shop pros...
...Reading on, we encounter the president- of ETS encouraging employees with news that “we have strong areas of growth...
...One reason for the Council’s restlessness was the way ETS was handling a service called the Law School Data Assembly (LSDAS...
...services, research, and other activities in the field of educational testing...
...In 1970, the notion of student-asconsumer was dignified with a Commission on Tests sponsored by the1 CEEB...
...Even today, these CEEBcommissioned College Boards constitute the largest single program in the ETS repertoire...
...But it hardly shares the range of interests that occupy ETS...
...c) has a contract “in perpetuity” to d) is more than five times the size of its e) all of the above...
...A Boston College law student suffered a similar experience...
...In the resulting shift of markets, both corporations began to make inroads into the traditional domains of the other...
...When business convinces us we need to buy more deodorants and bigger cars, we can see Madison Avenue’s hand...
...There’s the incentive: get your college’s name associated in print with such fellow “consortium” members as Harvard and Stanford...
...Inside ETS - Or the Plot to Multiple-Choice Us Firom Cradle to Grave by Eric Rodriguez The Educational Testing Service (ETS): a) is a non-profit institution...
...Instead, he had to pay LSDAS $1 5 for the privilege of having it do the same thing-collecting transcripts and recommendations, and passing them on to the school in a standardized form...
...ACT underbid ETS, winning not only the contract, but also an invitation to design both guidance programs for pre-med students not accepted by medical schools and evaluation procedures for doctors in need of refresher courses...
...In 1968, the Educational Testing Service received $1.8 million for 105 research projects...
...One official estimates that ETS has doubled its volume of business every five years since its founding...
...Incidentally, students who complete SDQs may find themselves besieged with letters from unheard of colleges around the country...
...More significantly, income exceeded expenditures by $1.9 million...
...When confronted with steadily dwindling sales, most ,companies redesign their product in hope of reaching a wider market...
...Where once college applicants were lucky to get a tour of the campus and a perfunctory handshake at the admissions office, now many are wined, dined, and perhaps otherwise entertained, in a manner once reserved for athletes...
...A decade ago, public service ann o uncements asked ominously, “When your child is ready for college, will college be ready for him...
...This is a difficult time, but we’ve started many promising ventures...
...Later the process was modified so that copies of SAT scores were sent to high-school guidance counselors who presumably decided whether it was in the best interest of the student to know his scores...
...Created to serve the interests of the member institutions of the Board, ETS now engages in activities that lead it far from the field of educational testing...
...As the crucial moment approached, the student checked again with Harvard: no records...
...Direct reporting of SAT scores to the students is a relatively new development...
...Even if we were alerted, the “non-profit” ,veil can conceal many activities...
...tic Aptitude Test (better known as the SAT or “College Boards”), the Law School Achievement Test (LSAT or “Law Boards”) and the Graduate Record Exam...
...ETS is larger now than ever, and it is still growing...
...Siamese Twins in Perpetuity None of this threatens to undermine the contracts for the SATs...
...In 1972, for example, 1.6 million students took the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which ETS produced for CEEB on a 7s-percent “cost-plus” contract...
...A school board administrator from a prosperous Washington, D. C., suburb spoke of the “impressive building program” on the Princeton “campus” of ETS, adding quickly that she had visited there on occasion: “As you may know...
...At the Infant Laboratory in Princeton, researchers behind one-way mirrors monitor the behavior of fourand five-month-old “paid” subjects in studies on cognitive development...
...With these advantages, ACT has beaten ETS several times in recent years...
...We have the resources to carry through, and what we need now is faith and hard work...
...Indeed, its current status is like the tail (ETS) wagging the dog (CEEB...
...She was able to attend law school only because Boston College did not su-bscribe to LSDAS...
...Yet most colleges and universities don’t seem to mind the aggressive marketing strategy employed by ETS...
...We never did...
...Their tolerance grows from the College Entrance Examination Board’s mantle of academic respectability, and its paternal connection with ETS...
...But few do it with the elan that ETS has displayed in facing its current crisis...
...ETS employees are exhorted that there must be “no relenting of effort...
...ETS also designed a battery of tests for Children’s Television Workshop (a growing educational conglomerate in its own right), which was interested in testing how effective Sesame Street and the Electric Company have been in educating children...
...But an even better picture of the corporation’s size can be derived from ETS’ balance sheet...
...ETS got its start in educational testing back in 1947, when the College Entrance Examination Board (CEEB), the Camegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and the American Council on Education joined to create a non-profit corporation authorized to “engage in...
...Such debates probably peaked during the mid-1960s when the College Boards played a major role in selecting the small percentage of the products of the post-war baby boom who got to attend a prestige university...
...ACTing on Competition It is only fair to mention that much of ETS’ haste in developing these new services for the student comes from that most American of motives, healthy competition...
...Now, instead of expecting the colleges to motivate students to take the tests, ETS is now trying to appeal directly to the student...
...Not only in size but also in scope, ETS has gone far beyond the visions of 1947...
...Now ETS has come all the way around and lets students decide, after receiving their scores, what schools they want them sent to...
...As an official at a moderately selective Washington, D. C., university put it, “Are test scores necessary when you’re already accepting 80 per cent of your applicants...
...ETS then flourishes largely because it is free from the laws of the market...
...As colleges hustle to attract students, ETS must scramble to create new products and new demands for old ones...
...workshops...
...This kind of appeal is particularly well-suited to higher education where “academic quality” is so nebulous a concept that institutions place a disproportionate emphasis on the importance of these symbolic linkages with “great” universities...
...CEEB, faced with soaring numbers of college applicants, asked ETS to produce examinations which might separate the wheat from the chaff...
...Yet ETS is far too insulated from the pressures of the marketplace to feel any real responsibility for these fiascos...
...The Sesame Street contract is typical of most ETS research, which, in the words of one institutional official, is done largely “in response to requests” from government agencies, educational associations and-that other bastion of non-profitabilityfoundations...
...It now has regional offices in Evanston, Berkeley, and Austin (although most employees are based in Princeton, where the organization had its beginnings...
...Despite these internecine squabbles, the relationship itself doesn’t seem in peril...
...While colleges and universities may join CEEB for various reasons, all are required to use at least one ETS service...
...The failures of the Law School Data Assembly Service can’t be dismissed as simply a corporate snafu that jeopardized an important contract...
...Moreover, ETS is in the enviable position of being guaranteed business by all of the individual members of the CEEB...
...b) makes almost $2 million annually...
...ETS and its non-profit sisters are not despoiling the environment or rigging oil prices or doing anything outside the norms of business practice-but because it is behaving like other corporations, it is worth lifting its veils...
...Yet ETS has neither reduced its staff nor restricted its operations in the face of slack demand-a reaction that might have surprised the educators who fust chartered ETS to serve as a convenience to the universities...
...This service was a concept of quite remarkable effrontery, for it forced the students to pay for what they’d been doing themselves all dong...
...Back in the late 1940s, SAT scores went directly to the designated colleges under the theory that students were not mature enough to know their own abilities...
...ETS has also broadened its horizons at the other end of the age scale and now has tests for pre-schoolers as well...
...for professional people...
...When several months went by with no word from Harvard, he called the school only to be informed that his LSDAS records had never arrived...
...Rather this corporate error may have unfairly prevented a number of students from attending law school...
...It is neither a private business nor a public organization, yet like both of them it has employees who must be supplied with the kind of work they know how to do...
...Urgent appeals to LSDAS produced the records at the last minute...
...An administrator at a member university described with some indignation the ETS promotion techniques: a new service is generally announced in a pair of letters, one to the president of the university, the other to the admissions director...
...they sponsor all kinds of meetings...
...This would just be a textbook make-work project if LSDAS did not exercise its tyrannical power over the student (if LSDAS loses the information, the schools will never consider your application) in such a remarkably capricious way...
...The university eagerly awaited the results of the study-their first such in several yearn-but ETS had nothing to say...
...Some colleges that admit virtually all applicants still require the submission of SAT scores...
...The SAT scores themselves, he explained, are not strong predictors of academic performance...
...If a business wants to sell us deodorants, it has to advertise...
...In fact, one ETS official remarked that the organization had outgrown its very name, because “Educational Testirig Service” no longer adequately suggests its range of activities...
...All this, while the “non-profit” institution expects to finish the fiscal year with a net income of over $1 d o n . All this adds credence to the claims of those who accuse ETS of unfairly exploiting its special status...
...The concept of student-as-consumer represents a 180-degree turn for ETS...
...But the corporation has come a long way since 1947...
...When government employees start to defend a program simply because it keeps them in work, we call it featherbedding...
...Your confusion is understandable because the inner workings of ETS are little known outside of educational circles...
...So that now not only college admissions officers, but also employers interested in rationalizing their personnel departments may turn to ETS for assistance...
...Institutional clients also encounter incompetence: the admissions office of a Washington, D. C. university contracted with ETS for a study of the validity of its selection procedures...
...The effect of this double-teaming may be to put the admissions director “in the hot seat” when his boss starts asking why the school is not employing the latest from ETS...
...Before forwarding SDQs to designated colleges, ETS stores information from the questionnaires in computers programmed to produce customized mailing lists for colleges willing to buy the names of desirable candidates...
...If the surplus cannot be sopped up by salaries and expenses before it reaches the bottom line, it can be reinvested in more institutional expansion...
...As a creature of the CEEB, an association representing academic institutions, ETS has always emphasized the interests of college admissions offices...
...Take, for example, the November, 1973, issue of the ETS house organ, aptly titled Examiner, that proclaimed in a banner headline, “Finances Brightening, Officers Say...
...How does CEEB regard its progeny...
...Such bungling is not confined to any one division of ETS, nor is it solely confined to those divisions that serve students...
...Even where open admissions policy has not been embraced, admissions officers are beginning to question the value of tests such as the SAT...
...Nothing in its charter explicitly bars ETS from pursuing these far-flung interests...
...This real estate was assessed at $26.5 million in 1972...
...In fact, it was the first topic mentioned by corporate officials when I talked with them in Princeton...
...So ETS uses its special status as a non-profit institution, as the creature of respectable academic associations, to strengthen its hold on the testing market...
...The ACT Student Profile Section, a standard component of the ACT student assessment program, for example, obviously influenced the design of the ETS Student Descriptive Questionnaire (SDQ), a recent addition to the Admissions Testing Program...
...Small wonder the Chauncey Conference Center has an “occupancy rate above expectations.,’ Other promotional devices designed to boost “sales” amount to pure hucksterism...
...At each school where ETS convinced the admissions office to go along with LSDAS, the student would no longer send his customary packet of transcripts, letters of recommendation, and application forms...
...One ETS publication mailed to admissions officers lists nearly 100 institutions which participate in a certain program...
...The relationship between ETS and CEEB still guarantees that ETS will run the tests, although in other ways the relationship has changed considerably since 1947...
...Fewer students are applying to the more selective four-year colleges, and more are going part-time or attending junior colleges, which usually don’t require SAT scores...
...Last year, the Association of American Medical Colleges, apparently dissatisfied with‘ ETS’ handling of the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), offered the contract for bidding...
...Among the services now offered the student are the College Locator Service, a kind of computer dating service to ease the admissions rat-race (or what is left of it), and the College Handbook, a college guide stressing such information as the average SAT scores of freshmen at individual colleges...
...Actually divorce between the two institutions would be difficult, since they seem to be forever joined, like Siamese twins-a clause in the original contract between CEEB and ETS prevents CEEB from contracting with any other agency to produce its admissions testing program...
...Its course toward survival has -been entirely predictable...
...What public attention ETS has received has generally been concerned with the impact on American education of multiple choice tests like the ScholasEric Rodriguez is a Maryland journalist and a veteran of countless ETS exams...
...This trend strikes at the raison d’etre of the SAT, whose aim is to rationalize the process of selection...
...But “test volume decline” has become a major concern at ETS...
...Its several-hundred acre Princeton “campus” is dominated by eight large buildings-including a warehouse where forklifts stack bales of ETS publications, the recently constructed Chauncey Conference Center (which has already, according to ETS officials, achieved an “occupancy rate above expectations”), and offices for a work force of almost 2,000...
...One clause, however, prohibits competition with the activities of the founding institutions...
...As a non-profit, non-stock corporation, the Educational Testing Service enjoys tax-exempt status and therefore doesn’t have to allow for taxation in calculating its bids...
...After all, ACT grew up in a part of the country where open admissions was the rule rather than the exception...
...Like ETS, ACT experienced “test volume decline,” but somewhat later than its rival...
Vol. 6 • March 1974 • No. 1
