People who like to know where all the money goes can now enjoy reading an audit of the Educational Testing Service for the year ending September 2022. Download it from the Federal Audit Clearinghouse, or just message me for a copy. This audit contains information that will be published in the next 990 form release from ETS. Update: it is available via Propublica now.
Revenues for the year were 1.06 billion dollars, down from 1.07 billion for the year ending September 2021.
The audit reports an operating loss of about 93 million dollars. I think that is the largest loss for all of the years I have records for (back to 2002). Note that ETS no longer develops or administers the STAAR exams for the State of Texas. That very large contract ($388 million dollars) has since been awarded to Pearson and Cambium.
There are a few mildly interesting things deeper in the audit:
Like everyone else in 2021/2022 ETS took a bath on its investments. Its assets are listed at 1.8 billion dollars, down from 2.0 billion.
We can deduce from page 12 that ETS paid 22 million dollars for a controlling (91%) stake in Toronto-based “Kira Talent.” To quote Wikipedia, they “[operate] a cloud-based holistic admissions assessment platform designed for use by academic admissions departments to assess and enroll students.” Sounds good to me.
I think we can deduce from page 21 that the HiSET exam was sold to PSI for 3.6 million dollars.
29% of revenues come from one “client.” This note puzzles me every year. My guess is that the client is the State of California, but I am probably wrong. That seems too high.
Update from the future: I’ve learned that the above client is the College Board.