Talk:Educational Testing Service

Common usage vs. acronym
Which name do you want (ETS or spelled out)? Angela and I have differing opinoins on this. One is that we should use the abbreviated version, as that is what most people remember and call the test in common usage. The other opinion is that acronyms should be spelled out. We'll keep this with the acronym for now, as that's how it started, but feedback's appreciated. --zandperl 04:38, 23 Oct 2003 (UTC)
 * I was talking more about the exams themselves being at the short version (GRE for example). I have less strong views on this as most people probably do know what ETS stands for, but not what GRE stands for. Angela

The legal business name is "Educational Testing Service." The brandname used is "ETS." There is no "the" as in "the Educational Testing Service" or "the ETS." This is a common mistake. I recommend using the spelled out name the first time in the article, and "ETS" after that.Henrycaesar (talk) 21:25, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Profit
I removed the following:
 * This has led many students to cynically view the ETS as being motivated purely by profit, and not by their professed motive of helping colleges and universities determine student readiness for further educational challenges. 

I don't see how this can be true when ETS is a non-profit organisation. Are there any sources to back up the idea that people think this? Angela 04:43, Oct 23, 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I'm unclear as to whether ETS is actually non-profit or not. Their info page, says nothing about being non-profit, and the only source I have regarding it, the TOEFL page states that the College Board is non-profit but says nothing about the ETS. As for the opinion of students on the ETS, again I do not have a reference-able source for this, but I am currently a graduate student and throughout my whole educational carreer my peers and teachers have accused the ETS of being a monopoly. I tried to make the statement in NPOV, by saying that it is the opinion of students that the ETS is making a profit, rather than stating it as fact. I want to convey that there is a portion of students and teachers/professors whom express a strong sentiment of dislike for the ETS, specifically for the reasons I stated and not just a dislike of test-taking. Can you help me express this without sacrificing the NPOV?


 * this page confirms they are non-profit.[User:Angela|Angela]]

Above link is broken. ETS is infact, non-profit, HOWEVER the following may be of significant interest, according to David Hoff, "Testing ETS," Education Week (December 1, 1999),p. 3 their 1998 IRS tax form states that ETS holds $34.8 mill in cash, $132 mill in stocks, and $133.4 mill in property (non-taxable). With executives earning in excess of half a million dollars annual sallary. I would like to take this oppertunity to remind everyone that this was as of 1998, nearly 8 years ago. So I will not remove the non-profit bit from the entry, but I do suggest someone take a bit more time and research to clearly explain how much of a profit can still be considered non-profit here. Travis 05:06, 13 December 2005 (UTC)  The question ought to be not whether they are legally non-profit, but whether they charge too much, exercise monopoly power, and lavish high salaries on their employees. Who cares whether they make money or not as a legal entity?

The parent company, ETS, is as the article says a 501c3, not-for-profit educational institution. ETS has to keep careful track of all of its activities to ensure that they fall under the mission statement from the nonprofit charter they got from the New York Board of REgents when the company was started. That mission statement is this: "Our mission is to help advance quality and equity in education by providing fair and valid assessments, research and related services.Our products and services measure knowledge and skills, promote learning and performance, and support education and professional development for all people worldwide." Any of their activities that fall outside this mission are for-profit, and are accounted for and federal corporate income taxes are paid on those business activities. To keep things clean, most of those activities are done through for-profit subsidiaries, like Prometric and ETS Global BV.

This article does seem to have a strong anti-ETS bias, in that it presents the position that ETS has had problems in the first year of delivering its UK program through the National Assessment AGency, but doesn't mention its hundreds of testing programs that did not have any delivery problems. It focuses on the "monopoly" charges that brought on legislation in New York, but not on the fact that ETS has never been found to have a monopoly on anything. The College Board's SAT has vigorous competition from ACT. The TOEFL has vigorous competition from IELTS, and now from Pearson's new partnership with the GMAC. All of ETS's K-12 business, which is over 25% of its business is highly competitive with companies like Pearson, CTB McGraw-Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Measured Progress, DRC, and about six others.

The fact that it originally said (before I corrected it) that "most" of ETS's business from The College Board, shows how out of date these views are. Only 22-25% of its business is from The College Board, and that doesn't count its for-profit subsidiaries. Henrycaesar (talk) 21:38, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality
Does anyone have a problem with this sentence: "ETS's main function is keep its overpaid staff occupied." ? I do. Also, citation needed after the sentence stating that the entire reason ETS resides in Princeton is so it will "seem" like it is associated/endorsed by the Princeton Review. Julesrbf 21:41, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree it's a major bias. ETS's Board of Trustees constantly monitors salaries, especially of senior management, to make sure it's not out of line with the company's position as a nonprofit. Salaries are competitive for each part of the industry and the senior execs get paid considerably less than they could make in their for-profit competitors. Plus no one can get any stock options because there is no stock in a nonprofit. All the for-profit competitors give stock options as a benefit to senior management. The thing to remember is that ETS can only make money by competing in the market and selling products and services against competitors. They get no government funds and they get no donations. That means they need people who can run a competitive business and you have to pay a competitive compensation to get people who can do that.

The reason ETS has a big campus in Princeton has nothing to do with getting associate or endorse by the Princeton Review. The Princeton Review is a competitor that sells test prep programs. The reason ETS is in Princeton is because it was founded there by people associated with Princeton University. They bought a huge farm years ago when the land was cheap and they still have it. They have made the ETS campus a public green space for the use of the people in the community, so they are actually providing the town with a free park. Henrycaesar (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I also have a problem with these lines. Someone obviously does not like ETS.

What about the use of "campus-like headquarters"? What is its relevance to the article or neutrality? The language sounds a bit biased in ETS's favor, as though it's straight from an advertising brochure. The Google map doesn't necessarily demonstrate this attribute either, with the exception of a lot of green space. From that aerial photo, one could claim a "golf-course-like headquarters", which would be equally inaccurate.

Make no mistake, I dislike ETS, but I don't want the article to be biased either way. I'm sure there are plenty of documented criticisms of ETS, but if we want to include them, they must come from cited sources. I agree about the "campus-like headquarters" bit - I'm going to take care of THAT right now! BlackberryLaw 03:49, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this is a biased article. There is no golf course there. And the buildings are quite plain on the inside, like you'd expect from a nonprofit institution. What this article needs is a few paragraphs of positive information about ETS. I can write it, but I have to make sure I get all the accurate references together. Henrycaesar (talk) 21:50, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

I am a postgraduate recruiter for a top British university, and have found ETS results to be as reliable as a flipped coin. I don't know if their staff are overpaid, but given the atrocious quality of their in-house publications and the worthlessness of their tests, I'd have to say that the sentence is pretty accurate!88.110.112.62 (talk) 15:59, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

The warning that the Scientific Contributions section is written like an advertisement seems biased in itself. Is it written like an advertisement because it is factual and positive? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.221.18.157 (talk) 15:21, 19 April 2014 (UTC)

I have removed the warning templates from the Scientific Contributions section. The statements in the section are accurate and well documented, and the section is relevant to the article. The article is about ETS and the section is about ETS' contributions to the field of educational and psychological assessment. Those contributions go well beyond "standardized tests." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.215.29.215 (talk) 01:35, 29 June 2016 (UTC)

Suggested Updates
I'd like to suggest to the editors some updates:

Nancy Cole is past president (was effective July 2000) Change Nancy Cole to President and CEO Kurt Landgraf Ref: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E3D81638F934A35754C0A9669C8B63&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fE%2fEducational%20Testing%20Service

Add link to Wikipedia page for "standardized examinations" - change text to "standardized tests" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_test

Add 'K-12' and 'higher education' - in "primarily in the United States for 'K-12' and 'higher education,"  - link to those entries on Wikipedia. K-12 = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-12, higher education = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher_education

Add 'GRE' - in "tests such as TOEFL and 'GRE' - and link to this Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduate_Record_Examination

Rosedale 085 18:53, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

To balance the strong anti-ETS bias in the article, I suggest linking to the FAQ page on the ETS webside, which is at http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.22f30af61d34e9c39a77b13bc3921509/?vgnextoid=3759253b164f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD Henrycaesar (talk) 21:54, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

Neutral POV on ETS
There has been recent editing of this page in which an anonymous editor removes referenced information about ETS that might negatively affect the reputation of the organization. Let's commit to presenting important, cited, factual information about the topic, disregarding whether it might make the company look good or bad. Nesbit (talk) 15:37, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * That isn't surprising given the current situation with ETS Europe in England. However, given the scale of their problems there, I would say that negative - though accurate - information on Wikipedia is the least of their problems. Wheelchair Epidemic (talk) 19:03, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

History and location
"Starting in 1937, this organization pioneered the use of mark sense technology and the IBM 805 Test Scoring Machine."

Surely this should appear after a concise statement of the areas of expertise etc.?

"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; processing, shipping, customer service and test security is in nearby Ewing"

Could somebody confirm this? If they have sole use of 376 acres I don't see why they need additional local offices.

MarkMLl (talk) 23:04, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

It can be confirmed here: http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.22f30af61d34e9c39a77b13bc3921509/?vgnextoid=fbe65784623f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD Building on the 376 acres is severely limited by local zoning since it is a residential area. The facilities used for printing and scoring tests require frequent access by large trucks and therefore had to be located in an industrial zone in nearby Ewing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Henrycaesar (talk • contribs) 21:37, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

current data
I've read some of the debates above, I'd like to add current numbers to the discussion and propose to update the article. ETS is an NPO and as such must fill out IRS form 900. The form is publicly available and contains the following info: 19857 employees and a total revenue of $959,851,324 and a profit of $26,747,690 in 2010. --Grendelshitsuren (talk) 10:18, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

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Pictures in lead
Hi not looking to argue, but I have some suggestions regarding the pictures in the lead, especially the pond. Before getting into that, I just want to say that on mobile, it is tedious to have to scroll past four pictures before reaching the second paragraph of text. So that is my reasoning for believing that (re)moving at least one of the pictures is called for.

You say that the pond picture is meant to illustrate how ETS spends test-takers' money. I don't disagree with the sentiment, but I also don't think that the point of Wikipedia is to send a message, which is what that somewhat sounds like (unless there are sources pointing to the pond as wasteful spending, for example).

Either way, my thoughts are that the pond picture could be moved into the "Criticism" section. There, it could have a more detailed and cited caption (or body text) specifically explaining how money was needlessly spent on it, and therefore it depicts an example of criticism, if that is your point regarding the image.

Another thought was to move the pond (along with maybe some of the other building pictures) into the "Current status" section and space out the images between paragraphs, since they depict the headquarters after all. This would be neutral and not send much of a message, but provide some nice visual representation without cluttering the lead.

In the end, I just felt that it was a bit cumbersome on mobile with there being so many pictures before reaching actual body text, so I think some of the pictures could instead be placed somewhere more contextually relevant. Let me know your thoughts. Best, ChromeGames923 (talk · contribs) 07:58, 11 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with moving the pond picture into the criticism section if that resolves your concerns about the first part of the article being too cluttered on mobile devices. The point is that ETS is a nonprofit with a headquarters campus that is much more lavish than the corporate campuses maintained by most large private corporations.  I just looked around on Google Books and Steven Brill was complaining in this article about ETS's spendthrift ways all the way back in 1974. Most other test administrators (e.g., ACT, LSAC) maintain relatively small and ordinary-looking headquarters buildings to avoid the appearance of wasting testtakers' fees on luxuries that do not directly improve the quality of test administration. --Coolcaesar (talk) 01:23, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know if all four photographs are necessary to show that the campus is "much more lavish than the corporate campuses maintained by most large private corporations." This seems to be a subjective statement and it is debatable if the photographs necessarily establish this issue. It did cause the article to load slower on my mobile device. Jurisdicta (talk) 01:43, 20 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I just moved the fourth photograph down as proposed by User:ChromeGames923 and added the source I found. I have not seen any issues with this article's loading time on mobile or landline.  It sounds like you might be on a slow 2G or 3G connection. If your device can't load this article probably, it sounds like it probably can't load San Jose, California (which has far too many photos). --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:51, 20 October 2020 (UTC)