ETS: Educational Testing Scam

We always knew Educational Testing Systems (ETS), the administrators of the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), was out to get us. We knew that that the SATs were not true tests of ability or learning, and that with practice, we could beat the test. We also knew that the fees were unreasonable, and it was unfair-the more erudite of us even used the term monopoly. But as mere high school students, our voices just weren't heard. It took another test-maker, ACT Inc. of Iowa City, to finally cry out against ETS's vice-like grip on educational testing.

Last November, ACT Inc. filed a federal lawsuit against Sylvan Learning Systems for making a deal with the Chauncy Group, a for-profit subsidiary of the non-profit ETS. Sylvan Learning Systems and the Chauncy Group had made a deal so that they could offer students the computer-based GRE (ETS otherwise lacks the computers to offer the test nationwide).

ACT's problem with the deal was that Sylvan Learning Systems now had unfair control over educational testing by making a deal with a non-profit. Furthermore, other critics point out that ETS still maintains status as a nonprofit while making revenues of $411 million a year. So that's where our test-taking fees end up. But what few people have focused on, and what is most astounding, is that ETS has started to market its own test preparation guides. They even use the slogan-would you believe this?!- "we prepare the tests, let us help prepare you." And although the exams are provided from the non-profit sector, the test preparation material is sold from the for-profit subsidiary. Surely this is a conflict of interest.

ETS was set up in 1947 to give universities a standard by which to judge admissible students. Because its primary mission was educational, ETS was granted non-profit status. Since then, its business has grown to include testing services for graduate schools, immigrants, and teachers.

With the growth of this business has come an increased reliance on these exams as a measure of ability and intelligence. Critics have often charged that the tests are biased against women and minorities. Nonetheless, the tests are now used at over 3,000 schools. The SAT, in particular, was set up as a test that could evaluate ability to perform academically in college. For along time, ETS denied that any test preparation could help at all, insisting that the exams were a test of intrinsic ability.

For years, ETS scoffed at test preparation, but now they are marketing their own line of products, Andrew S. Rosen, CEO of Kaplan Educational Centers, told the New York Times. ETS has jumped on the band wagon and offers its own test preparation guides for its own tests, an advantage clearly not shared by any of the for-profit companies in the field.

More important, ETS has not-so-implicitly acknowledged that the tests are not measures of intrinsic ability and that test preparation guides do help to raise scores. Surely that goes against the idea of their exam. Just like any other exam in high school or college, some students can perform well without prior preparation; many others can succeed with studying. However, other exams are written to test knowledge of an area, so that studying for them provides some sort of education in itself. ETS has not claimed that studying for their exams does anything other than raise exam scores. And now that these exams are acknowledged to be just like any other exams where studying raises scores, they are surely a waste of time, not only the time wasted to take the exam but the time it takes to study for the exam.

This term President Clinton has been battling to get funding for nationalized school testing. Some teachers have protested that instead of teaching students for the sake of their education, they will now have to teach them to perform well on the exam and thereby compromise on the time spent for their knowledge. Perhaps Clinton should hold off after seeing ETS falter.

Unless, of course, Congress decided to make a little extra money by selling test preparation guides on the side.