The ETS 990 form for the year ending September 30, 2023 is now available.  You can read it on Propublica.

A few things are worth noting here:

1. ETS reported revenue of 1.06 billion dollars for the year.  That’s down from 1.12 billion in 2022. Other than the pandemic-impacted 2020 financial year, you’ve got to go back to 2011 to find a year with less revenue (note that the 2015 form is for a partial year).
2. ETS reported a  net loss of about 9 million dollars for the year.
3. Program service revenue was 918 million dollars, which I think is the lowest since 2010.
4. Total assets are valued at about 1.79 billion dollars, up slightly compared to last year.
5. The organization’s top earner was former president Walt MacDonald, who was paid about 2.3 million dollars for the year.  He left ETS in June of 2022.
6. Indeed, former employees did pretty well, financially. The form lists decent amounts of money paid to key individuals who left as long ago as early 2021.
7. Current president Amit Sevak earned 658 thousand dollars for the year.
8. Cambium Assessment was paid 26.8 million dollars for subcontracting under the big California contract.
9. Prometric got 26.3 million for running test centers.
10. ProctorU got 23.4 million for its amazing services.
11. About 106 thousand dollars was spent on lobbying.
12. I still don’t know how much was spent to purchase PSI, but I guess that will be in the audit (coming soon).
13. The ETS hotel brought in revenue of 3.1 million dollars against expenses of 3.5 million dollars.  Though one popular YouTuber has described it as “sort of like a glammed up university residence,” I still dream of spending a weekend there. Apparently the nearby ETS hiking trail just got new signage, highlighting the organization’s proud history.

—

The standard disclaimer: Why should one care? One probably shouldn’t care. But ETS is a tax-exempt organization that still has an outsized influence on the lives of millions of young people in America and around the world. The point is not to gawk at the large numbers but just to share things that smarter people than me ought to be writing about.

I took the TOEFL iBT Home Edition a few days ago. Below are a few nitpicky comments I scribbled down right after I finished:

1. To prepare, I used TOEFL TestReady. This was my first time to interact with that product as a test taker might. I like it a lot, but it desperately needs proper timers. The TOEFL, like most standardized tests, is partially a test of one’s time management skills. This should be reflected in preparation products. I’ll write much more about TestReady later on.

2. I hope that technology renders room scans obsolete one day.  They are a pain.  I sense that developers might not use the same computers or have the same rooms as test takers and therefore might not realize just how much of a pain they are. The Duolingo English Test doesn’t make use of this measure, but seems to have replaced it with extremely strict gaze tracking… which is a frequent subject of test taker complaints on social media. But hope springs eternal.

3. Test takers are instructed to state that they agree with the “terms and conditions” listed on the TOEFL website. I have been unable to locate them.  Next time, I’ll ask the proctor for a link. How many test takers have actually been aware of what they are agreeing to?

4. I was surprised to see that the test STILL includes a message telling test takers to put on their headset. Regular readers know that using a headset during the test is against the rules and will likely cause the test results to be invalidated. These instructions ought to be removed immediately.

5. ETS should get rid of the microphone calibration meter thingie.  My voice stayed in the “too quiet” range even when I spoke as loud as possible. Over the years, hundreds of test takers have reported the same. I knew to just forget about it and speak at a normal level during the test… but not everyone does. Many people respond by screaming their answers as loudly as possible, which is especially troublesome when it occurs at test centers. Surely the meter can be replaced with a calibration method that doesn’t provide any visible feedback.

6. My test crashed one time, right after the first lecture played in the listening section. My proctor restarted it.

7. I think I heard an Irish accent.

8. One really starts to understand the whole “perceived difficulty” controversy when they sit down and take a bunch of tests. The TOEFL has always included a handful of so-called “Killer Questions” that cause even the most experienced test taker to go crosseyed. They give the test a reputation for toughness, even though you can get them all wrong and still perform at a C2 level.

9. At 11:49 PM the day before the test, I received an email reminding me to add free score recipients by 10:00 PM the day before the test. Thanks, guys.

10. I scored 29 in reading and 30 in listening. Which surprised me a bit, as I was really confident about my reading answers… but not confident at all about a few listening answers.

The next test for me? The PTE! Stay tuned!

This account of a remote proctor making a test taker run a gauntlet of increasingly inane security checks was recently shared on Reddit.  It made me chuckle.  I love how the situation continues to escalate, until the test taker is required to leave his flat and show the proctor the elevators in his building.

Any screenwriters in the audience? I’m imagining a sort of Kevin Smith movie about a bunch of young people working as remote proctors. To deal with the monotony of the job, they compete to see who can get their test takers to do the weirdest, most absurd things before they quit their tests in frustration.

I’ll visit Chandigarh next week. I’ll be there roughly September 22 to September 27. After that, I will be somewhere else. I’m interested in learning about B2B relationships involving testing firms and organizations based in India. That’s something I’ve not paid enough attention to in recent years even though it is a pretty big deal. Do give me a shout if you will be around.