Testing Firm Under Fire Over Delays

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Britain is investigating the American testing company that makes the SAT, saying it bungled the grading of thousands of national tests in what lawmakers are calling a “fiasco.”

Outrage over the Educational Testing Service’s conduct accelerated yesterday, when British press outlets reported that ETS employees were in such a rush to get late exams back to schools that they attempted to recruit hotel bar staff as graders. The company failed to report schoolchildren’s scores on time and is accused of grading their exams incorrectly.

Rising demand has put considerable pressure on the testing industry, including ETS, which administers 50 million exams around the world each year. Experts said the problems in Britain will hamper the company’s efforts to expand globally at a time when countries such as China, India, and Brazil are adopting standardized testing methods.

“To the extent that the international market is where the growth is, this is going to be important,” the editor of the trade publication School Improvement Industry Week, Marc Dean Millot, said. “There is an enormous amount of international activity going on.”

ETS was supposed to report the British test scores by July 8, but it has yet to deliver all of the exams, which were administered to 11- and 14-year-old students and often are used to determine their class placement. In addition, teachers are claiming that the tests were graded inconsistently, an allegation the company denies.

The Daily Mail newspaper added fuel to the fire yesterday when it reported that the testing service offered to hire bar staff as graders at the hotel where it set up an emergency operations center.

The company could be in danger of losing its five-year contract with Britain, worth more than $300 million. The government agency charged with monitoring standardized testing, Ofqual, has announced that it ordered an inquiry into the matter that will conclude later this year.

“Pupils and teachers work hard throughout the year and it is unacceptable that they have been let down in this way,” the chairwoman of Ofqual, Kathleen Tattersall, said in a statement.

While ETS has apologized for the delays, a spokesman, Tom Ewing, expressed optimism that its contract will continue and said he is not concerned about damage to the company’s international reputation.

“It doesn’t have any impact on the other tests we deliver,” Mr. Ewing said, referring to the delays in Britain. “This is an isolated incident that we’re going to address.”

Mr. Ewing, the company’s American spokesman, has been posted in Britain for the last three weeks to help contain the crisis.

Some education advocates have seized on the outrage in Britain to highlight their concerns about standardized testing in America. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, every state must administer an annual exam to students in grades three through eight. Some experts have warned that the testing surge the law has created is straining the companies contracted to implement it.

“England is, I think, reversing a time-old program of standardized testing for their students,” a founder of the New York-based advocacy group Time Out From Testing, Jane Hirschman, said. “We should learn from them.”


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