501 c 3 founded 1947 headquarters 660 rosedale road princeton new jersey key people robert s. murley chairman 1 products toefl and toeic tests gre general and subject tests and praxis series assessments services testing assessments and research for educational use website ets.org ets welcome sign as seen from rosedale road in lawrence township education in the united states by state territory by subject area history of issues finance law literacy reform levels primary secondary higher organizations education portal united states portal v t e messick hall at ets headquarters lord hall at ets headquarters pond behind messick and lord halls . educational testing service ets founded in 1947 is the world s largest private nonprofit educational testing and assessment organization . 2 it is headquartered in lawrence township new jersey but with a princeton address . ets develops various standardized tests primarily in the united states for k 12 and higher education and it also administers international tests including the toefl test of english as a foreign language toeic test of english for international communication graduate record examination gre general and subject tests and the praxis test series in more than 180 countries and at over 9 000 locations worldwide . many of the assessments it develops are associated with entry to us tertiary undergraduate and quaternary education graduate institutions but it also develops k 12 statewide assessments used for accountability testing in many states including california texas tennessee and virginia . in total ets annually administers 20 million exams in the u.s. and in 180 other countries . contents 1 history 2 scientific contributions 3 current status 4 criticism 5 tests administered 6 see also 7 references 8 further reading 9 external links history edit ets is a u.s. registered 501 c 3 non profit organization created in 1947 by three other nonprofit educational institutions the american council on education ace the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching and the college entrance examination board . 2 ets was formed in 1947 to take over the testing activities of its founders whose organizations were not well suited to running operational assessment programs and to pursue research intended to advance educational measurement and education . 3 4 among other things ace gave to the new organization the cooperative test service and the national teachers examination ; carnegie gave the gre ; and the college board turned over to ets the operation but not ownership of the sat for graduating high school students . scientific contributions edit in keeping with the purposes for which it was established ets developed a program of research that covered not only measurement and education but also such related areas as statistics educational evaluation and psychology particularly cognitive developmental personality and social psychology . this broad based research program attracted many individuals who distinguished themselves in their fields often while at ets but also in subsequent professorial positions . among the more influential scientists have been harold gulliksen whose book theory of mental tests helped codify classical test theory ; 5 6 frederic lord item response theory ; samuel messick 7 modern validity theory ; robert linn known for testing and educational policy ; norman frederiksen performance assessment ; ledyard tucker test analysis including inventing the angoff method of standard setting ; donald rubin missing data and causal modeling from observational data ; karl joreskog structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis ; paul holland differential item functioning test equating causal modeling ; john carroll language testing and cognitive psychology ; michael lewis infant cognitive social and emotional development ; irving sigel children s cognitive development ; 8 herman witkin cognitive and learning styles ; k. patricia cross adult education ; samuel ball an evaluation researcher who documented the positive educational effects of sesame street ; and david rosenhan known for the rosenhan experiment which challenged the validity of psychiatric diagnosis . members of the ets staff have been among the presidents of the national council on measurement in education ncme ; the psychometric society ; the measurement and evaluation division of the american educational research association aera ; the evaluation measurement and statistics division of the american psychological association apa ; the apa developmental psychology division ; and the jean piaget society . they have been among the executive editors of the journal of educational measurement journal of educational and behavioral statistics educational evaluation and policy analysis journal of educational psychology journal of applied developmental psychology and discourse processes . major citations have included the apa distinguished contributions to knowledge award norman frederiksen 1984 the apa distinguished scientific contribution award frederic lord 1988 ; the aera e.f. lindquist award william turnbull 1981 ; frederic lord 1988 ; samuel messick 1994 ; paul holland 2000 ; wendy yen 2008 ; the ncme career contributions to educational measurement award frederic lord 1990 ; paul holland 2004 ; neil dorans 2010 ; and the jean piaget society s lifetime achievement award irving sigel 2002 ; among many other awards . the high caliber of scientific staff allowed ets to produce both new knowledge and methodology especially in measurement and statistics much of which has been taken up by assessment organizations around the world . among the key scientific contributions were co invention of item response theory an integrated framework for asking and answering a variety of practical problems related to the design and analysis of tests ; 9 10 11 creation of an approach and software for structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis lisrel used throughout the social sciences to test theoretical relationships among variables ; 12 seminal contributions to modern validity theory including the idea that validity was a unitary concept and that the evaluation of score meaning requires consideration of the consequences of test use as those consequences may imply functional problems with the test ; 13 development of widely used approaches to data analysis when there are missing data ; 14 generation of approaches to causal modeling from observational data ; 15 16 invention of the in basket test used throughout the world to assess applicants for managerial jobs in a wide variety of industries ; 17 development of methods for detecting test unfairness including invention of the standardization approach to differential item functioning dif and application of the mantel haenszel method ; 18 creation of the holistic scoring approach to writing assessment a means of rapidly and reliably judging the quality of essay text which allowed direct writing assessment to become a more affordable alternative to multiple choice questions for large scale testing programs ; 19 20 current status edit ets international headquarters is located on an 376 acre 1.52 km2 campus outside of princeton new jersey in lawrence township mercer county new jersey ; 21 22 23 processing shipping customer service and test security is in nearby ewing new jersey . ets also has a major office in san antonio tx which houses its k 12 assessment programs division and smaller offices in philadelphia pa washington dc hato rey pr and concord sacramento and monterey ca. 24 overseas office locations all of which are associated with for profit subsidiaries that are wholly owned by ets include amsterdam ets global bv headquarters london ets global bv seoul ets global bv paris ets global bv amman ets global bv warsaw ets global bv beijing ets china and kingston ontario ets canada . not including its for profit subsidiaries ets employs about 2 700 individuals 25 including 240 with doctorates and an additional 350 others with higher degrees . to help support its nonprofit educational mission ets like many other nonprofits conducts business activities that are unrelated to that mission e.g. employment testing . under us tax law these activities may be conducted within limits by the nonprofit itself or by for profit subsidiaries . 23 most of the off mission work conducted by ets is carried out by such wholly owned for profit subsidiaries as prometric 26 which delivers tests for hundreds of third party clients ets global bv which contains much of the international operations of the company ets china and ets canada . about 25 % of the work carried out by ets is contracted by the college board a private nonprofit membership association of universities colleges school districts and secondary schools . the most popular of the college board s tests is the sat taken by more than 3 million students annually . ets also develops and administers the college board s preliminary sat national merit scholarship qualifying test psat nmsqt and the advanced placement program which is widely used in us high schools for advanced course credit . since 1983 ets has conducted the national assessment of educational progress naep known as the nation s report card under contract to the us national center for education statistics . naep is the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of what us students know and can do . ets is responsible for coordination among the nine naep alliance contractors for item development and for design data analysis and reporting . 27 in addition to the contract work that ets undertakes for nonprofit and government entities like the college board the national center for education statistics and state education departments the organization offers its own tests . these tests include the graduate record examinations gre for graduate and professional school admissions the test of english as a foreign language toefl for post secondary admissions the test of english for international communication toeic for use by business and industry and the praxis series for teacher licensure and certification . 28 in england and wales ets europe a unit of the ets global for profit subsidiary was contracted to mark and process the national curriculum assessments on behalf of the government . ets global took over this role in 2008 from edexcel a subsidiary of pearson which had encountered significant and repeated problems in carrying out the marking and processing contract . 29 30 31 as was the case for edexcel the first year of ets global s operation was struck by a number of problems including the late arrival of scripts to examiners a database of student entries being unavailable 32 and countrywide reports of problems with the marking of the papers . the opposition conservative party criticized the awarding of the contracts to ets and produced a dossier listing previous problems with ets s service . 33 the ets contract with the qca was terminated in august 2008 with an agreement to pay back 19.5 m and cancel invoices worth 4.6 m. 34 subsequently the contract for national curriculum assessment marking and processing was again awarded to edexcel . like the two prior contracts the edexcel contract has encountered significant quality problems 35 and the tests themselves the focus of longstanding controversy in the english education community and among the public have been subjected to a massive boycott by schools . 36 in 2009 ets released the my credentials vault service with interfolio inc to simplify the entire letter of recommendation process . 37 criticism edit ets has been criticized for being a highly competitive business operation that is as much multinational monopoly as nonprofit institution . 38 due to its legal status as a non profit organization ets is exempt from paying federal corporate income tax on many but not all of its operations . furthermore it does not need to report financial information to the securities and exchange commission though it does annually report detailed financial information to the irs on form 990 which is publicly available . 39 in response to growing criticism of its monopolistic power new york state passed the educational testing act a disclosure law which required ets to make available certain test questions and graded answer sheets to students . 40 problems administering england s national tests in 2008 by ets europe were the subject of thousands of complaints recorded by the times educational supplement . 41 their operations were also described as a shambles