E.T.S. Unveils ‘Code Of Fair Testing’ Plans
The nation’s largest developer of standardized achievement tests for students, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), recently announced several measures to increase transparency and ensure fairness in its programs. In a joint hearing before two education subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives, the newly-appointed ETS President, Gregory R. Anrig, stated that the nonprofit testing organization will:
1. Seek support from both commercial and nonprofit test-makers to establish a universal "Code of Fair Testing" for the industry.
2. Establish a "Visiting Committee" comprised of individuals external to ETS. This committee will conduct an annual evaluation of the organization to ensure it adheres to recently endorsed internal standards of fairness and quality. Importantly, the committee will include representatives from organizations that have been critical of ETS in the past.
3. Recommend to the Board of Trustees that ETS’s research on testing, which includes validity studies, information on correlations between income and test performance, and studies on the impact of coaching on test scores, be made available to the public.
Mr. Anrig made these announcements while opposing proposed federal legislation called the "Educational Testing Act of 1981," also known as the "truth-in-testing" bill. He argued that the bill was unnecessary since major test-makers had voluntarily subjected themselves to increased public scrutiny in recent years. ETS is most well-known as the creator of the College Board-sponsored Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), which is taken by approximately 1.2 million college-bound students annually. The organization also develops three other significant tests: the Graduate Management Admission Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and the Law School Admissions Test.
Together with the American College Testing Program, which tests nearly one million students each year, ETS is responsible for the majority of college entrance testing. A representative from the American College Testing Program also expressed strong opposition to the federal testing bill during the hearing. Mr. Anrig criticized the legislation as an interference in education and claimed that it would increase testing costs for thousands of test-takers.
Despite Mr. Anrig’s opposition, Representative Ted S. Weiss, a Democrat from New York and the bill’s sponsor, acknowledged ETS’s willingness to open itself up to public scrutiny as a positive step. However, he asserted that the truth-in-testing legislation was still necessary to ensure fairness for test-takers. The proposed law would mandate test-makers to disclose various information about test production, cost, and results, harmonizing different state requirements into one set of standards.
The Weiss bill is modeled after a truth-in-testing law that was enacted in New York in 1979. While only California has implemented a similar law, around 20 states are currently considering similar legislation. ETS strongly opposed the New York law in the past, citing increased costs and difficulties in comparing scores across different years. However, the organization eventually complied with the law, and the sponsors of the four major student tests, including the College Board, have voted to extend test-disclosure privileges nationwide. Starting from this school year, students taking the SAT examination will have access to this service.
Mary Ann M. Austen, an author of the New York law and a counsel for the New York Senate Committee on Higher Education, credited Mr. Anrig’s arrival for the announcement of these new accountability measures at ETS. She believed that his support for the truth-in-testing movement during his time as the education commissioner in Massachusetts played a significant role. Philip R. Rever from the American College Testing Program expressed cautiousness regarding ETS’s offer to establish industry-wide standards, expressing concerns about ETS’s dominance but agreeing with the general intention of the proposal.
