I’ll have you know that today is the 75th birthday of the Educational Testing Service.
ETS is an interesting organization. Love it or hate it, most people will agree that at one point ETS had a very fundamental and profound impact on American society. I think there is a case to be made that founding president Henry Chauncey was one of the most influential Americans of the 20th century. Domestically, anyway.
In previous decades ETS created and administered all of the major university admissions tests. Not only that, but the guy who cut your hair might have taken an ETS test to get his barber’s license. And the person who gave you golf lessons down at the club may have also taken an ETS test before getting his job.
I think this this anniversary won’t be noted in the press, which is an indication of the diminished stature of the organization today. ETS has divested itself of those occupational tests, and has lost the contracts for many of the standardized academic tests it doesn’t own outright (most recently it quietly wound-down most of its involvement in the SAT).
But ETS remains significant in other ways. If nothing else, it certainly is wealthier than ever before. The TOEFL remains important. The GRE somewhat important. The TOEIC is a phenomenon in Korea and Japan. And given the very important case regarding affirmative action currently before the Supreme Court of the USA it may be worth reflecting on the work of ETS over the past 75 years.
Interested parties may enjoy “The Big Test,” a book by Columbia University’s Nicholas Lemann. It traces the “utopian experiment” that was standardized testing. Another great book is “Henry Chauncey: An American Life” by Norbert Elliot of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The authors of both books made use of ETS’s extensive archives.