The Washington Post recently published a story about how Goodreads and other sites have been flooded with one-star reviews of Namwali Serpell’s book “Stranger Faces.” Reviews have mentioned that it is “RUINING HIGH SCHOOLERS’ LIVES.” This comes four years after the book was released to a significant amount of praise.
What gives? Well, apparently the College Board decided to use an excerpt from the book on the most recent AP English Language and Composition exam. According to Serpell, they didn’t ask for permission, and didn’t pay a licensing fee. They just helped themselves.
Serpell claims her writing was distorted, and the piece shouldn’t have been used out of the larger context of the book itself. To make matters worse, Serpell has long been a critic of standardized testing.
But wait… that’s not all! The College Board’s response was to deny that it acted “illegally or improperly.” But it was happy to quickly throw vendor ETS (Educational Testing Service) under the bus, claiming that it was ETS (not the College Board) who determined that the book could be excerpted under fair use doctrine. To make up for any hard feelings, they also offered to pay Serpell a retroactive royalty.
As most readers know, ETS has developed College Board tests since the day it was founded, but was recently booted from the development and administration of the SAT, an extremely lucrative gig which they enjoyed for more than six decades. They are still involved in the development of the AP Tests, but that may end as more of those tests go digital in the coming years.
The Post gives the final word on the matter to Serpell, who points out that students are “actually learning more from this issue than the test itself.” On Twitter, she also described the makers of the test as “a corporation that claims to be non-profit but is evidently rolling in money, and that believes it doesn’t need to ask permission from writers to use their work for its price-gouging, high-stakes, and pedagogically dubious exams.”
Clearly this face plant could have been avoided. In the wake of all the layoffs and buyouts at ETS over the past half decade I can’t help but think of ETS as an organization somewhat lacking in institutional memory. In the past, someone might have recognized Serpell’s name and suggested that they make use of literally any other author in America when writing test items.
Meanwhile, one is left wondering what compensation is paid to the authors of the books which are excerpted to create new forms for the TOEFL reading section week after week. ETS must be using the work of hundreds of published authors to develop that content.
One is also left wondering how ETS would respond to individuals or companies making use of its materials while claiming fair use (see also: this item).
Anyway. After a very trying week this comedy of errors was just the kind of pick-me-up I needed.