ETS History: Standardized Testing Origins

This document provides a summary of the origins and evolution of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and standardized testing, particularly focusing on the SAT. It highlights the pivotal role of Harvey Chauncey in establishing ETS and its influence on higher education. The summary details how the Army-Navy College Qualifying Test in 1943 demonstrated the feasibility of mass standardized testing, leading to the creation of ETS. The document also discusses the relationship between ETS and the College Board, the importance of test validity, and the expansion of ETS, including its relationship with the University of California. It concludes by emphasizing the significant impact of ETS on academia and society, urging students to be informed and prepared for standardized tests.

Demetrius L. Jenkins
A Summary of “Educational Testing Service (ETS) – April 2, 1943”
By Jed Applerouth, PhD on January 6, 2006 in Jed Said, Test Prep
Higher Education enrollment skyrocketed from 2 million students in 1951 to 3
million students in 1957 to 4 million students in 1961.
“The era of national standardized testing was born”
On April 2, the Army-Navy College Qualifying Test is administered to at least
316,000 high school seniors all over the country proving that standardized
multiple-choice tests can be given to a mass group. This assessment involved 40
times the number of members as had any other test in the history of standardized
testing
Harvey Chauncey’s lucky stars were shining when the Army and Navy contracted
him to conduct an Educational Testing Service (ETS) to 300,000 new recruits to
help with officer selection during the Second World War.
Through much political maneuvering, Harvey Chauncey, with the support of
Conant and the College Board, set off to create a new institution to oversee all
standardized testing in the country. The College Board, in a surprising move,
funded the new ETS and gave it exclusive rights to administer its standardized
tests. In exchange, the College Board would receive a cut from every test
administered. ETS would administer the tests at a national level, the College
Board would get kickbacks, and Chauncey would oversee the testing monopoly of
the US.
As more colleges considered using the SAT in their admissions decisions, the first
thing these schools wanted to know was: how useful is this test as a predictor of
academic performance?
Proving test validity, that the test assesses what it is supposed to assess, was, and
remains, one of the principal tasks of ETS. When you add in high school GPA, the
validity coefficient rises to .5, indicating a 50% chance of predicting freshman GPA
from SAT plus high school GPA. We now know that the SAT correlates as strongly

with parental income as with freshman GPA, but ETS tends to downplay this
information.
The Iowa tests were soon administered to public school students across the
country and continue to play a major role in academic assessment to this day.
As the ETS grew, Chauncey always kept his eye on the California University
System. In 1958 ETS offered to run all SAT tests for the California system
completely free of charge.
By 1967, the University of California required all of its applicants to take the SAT.
The University of California became ETS' largest and most profitable client.
When Chauncey retired in 1970, he had built ETS into an empire. Today ETS
employs more than 2,000 employees, and administers over 11 million tests each
year in 180 countries.
For better or for worse Harvey Chauncey’s little test has transformed the
landscape of academia, and some would say our society.
Until that day the key is to be informed, be prepared, and keep this little test in
proper perspective
Reference:
The Origins and Evolution of the SAT
https://www.applerouth.com/blog/2006/01/06/the-origins-and-evolution-of-the-
sat/comment-page-1/