Measuring something as broad as education brings to mind two questions: what is meant by education and what means would be used to measure it? Here in the West Windsor-Plainsboro area, the answer to those questions has been under study for a very long time. In fact, what is probably the most widely recognized organization in that business has been in Princeton for many years: Educational Testing Service, known to most people simply as ETS. With school starting soon, it’s a good time to start thinking about such things.
When ETS started in the early 1940s, the idea of measuring education was pretty much limited by what marks students got on tests. What was considered the most important factor for students and parents was what grade the student received, either a letter one—A, B, C—or a numerical one—100, 96, 70, 65, and so on. The grade was interpreted in at least two ways: as a measure of achievement for the student and as an indication of the educational value of the material and how it was taught. In any case, for the student the grade was a measure of achievement, and students could feel some satisfaction if they got a high grade, especially in comparison with some other student who had a reputation for being really “smart.”
The first time I became aware of some system to evaluate the widespread effectiveness of education was when the state of New York—where I lived—instituted the system of regents examinations. These tests were given to high school students throughout the state in almost all subjects. But by the time I was in high school, the regents exams in New York had been found by many to be too easy, especially for very selective schools whose students aspired to go to colleges of high ranking. Doing well on the regents tests was not considered an important factor in college eligibility. In fact, many colleges decided to give their aspiring students special tests—or entrance examinations—to show how well prepared their applicants were.
Then, in the early 1940s, a new idea started to become popular. The idea was to develop a system of college entrance tests that would be open to all students who wanted to take them, but with the idea that the tests would be more challenging than those in a widely applied system like the regents system in New York. Since my parents had sent me to a private school, they assumed that if I did well on these more challenging tests, I would be all set for just about any college. Needless to say, the attitude of the teachers at my school was that the regents exams were a waste of time. Nevertheless, since we were a New York school we did take them, but didn’t worry too much about how we did. (Actually, we usually did pretty well. But we knew that most colleges would not be impressed.) To impress the colleges, you had to do well on the new tests administered by the College Board and ETS.
Just after it started, ETS was located in Princeton in offices at 20 Nassau Street. Its influence on school testing and college admissions was quite limited then, but if you went to a school that depended on the scores for college admission of its students, it was a good idea to try to do well on its tests. At my school in Brooklyn we were especially aware of the importance of the ETS tests because one of our faculty members was a test evaluator for ETS. He spent part of every spring vacation in Princeton evaluating test essays written by students for the English language achievement test. Because of his knowledge of the evaluation process, he was a good teacher to have for our senior English course. Similar level tests were given at my school in history, chemistry and physics.
While I attended it, my school was well suited to using the ETS system, and most students and their parents were satisfied with the part it played in the college admission process of the day. Nevertheless, I am aware that at one point during the spring of my senior year, our school principal visited the dean of admissions of at least one nearby college to give a verbal recommendation for several of his student applicants. That wasn’t a way around the ETS system, simply a way to emphasize the results in case the dean hadn’t noticed. Many people were reluctant to give up this old-fashioned personal touch in college admissions.
But a couple of decades later I had to handle the “new and improved” version of college admissions with my own kids. By that time, ETS had grown to the point that it now had its own “campus” on Rosedale Road. The college admissions process had changed radically from what I knew. For one thing, when I took the ETS administered tests, the results were kept secret. Yes, the only recipient of the results was the applicant’s college. The student, the parents and even the teachers were not allowed to know the test scores. But in the 1960s, when students were demanding “rights,” ETS could no no longer get away with anonymity when it came to scores. They were there for the world to see, and many students made sure it did.
The history of ETS and its processes is a lengthy and fascinating one. And their part in college admissions has changed as they have found new business to influence. There are many ways to test almost anything out there, and ETS is probably involved in ones you never heard of. In the 1950s, because of a casual acquaintance with an ETS employee, I was asked to draw illustrations for a test that was to be given to members of the armed forces to measure their potential aptitude as mechanics. A typical question showed a series of tools, such as a hammer, a screwdriver, a chisel and a wrench. There was then a picture of a nail along with a question as to which of the tools would be used to drive it into a piece of wood. I never heard how many new mechanics were identified.
