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Academic Testing Providers, a pioneer of standardized testing and the longtime administrator of the SAT, is shedding 6 % of its 2,500-plus workers, based on an inside video announcement from CEO Amit Sevak obtained by Inside Greater Ed earlier this week.
An ETS spokesperson confirmed the layoffs, which have been introduced this morning, and mentioned their influence could be “international and company-wide,” affecting employees at each the central complicated in Princeton, N.J., and on the firm’s 4 satellite tv for pc workplaces.
The spokesperson declined to provide the precise variety of workers who could be let go, however given the group’s dimension, 6 % would quantity to round 150 folks. It’s no less than the fifth spherical of layoffs at ETS up to now three years, judging from a 2021 article that detailed an earlier layoff announcement beneath the earlier CEO.
“We have to rethink how we serve our clients and align ourselves to new methods of working, re-evaluate our expertise and staffing to ensure we now have what we have to transfer ahead, and to repeatedly, successfully and effectively handle our monetary well being,” Sevak, who took the ETS helm in 2022, mentioned within the video announcement. He added that he would maintain a companywide city corridor on Oct. 11 to debate the restructuring and the group’s monetary well being.
Along with administering the SAT—which is designed and owned by the Faculty Board—ETS owns the Graduate Report Examination, or GRE, the usual postbaccalaureate admissions examination, in addition to the Take a look at of English as a International Language (TOEFL), the first examination used to evaluate worldwide college students’ preparedness for English-language applications within the U.S.
The layoffs, and the broader issues concerning the group’s monetary sustainability and strategic planning, replicate a deeper turbulence shaking the standardized testing business—of which ETS was a pioneering titan. It stays the biggest non-public academic evaluation group on the earth.
“The altering wants of our clients and the shifting calls for of our enterprise are the driving forces behind at this time’s tough but vital choices,” Sevak mentioned within the video.
Outcomes from a current nameless worker engagement survey that have been shared with Inside Greater Ed present a common dissatisfaction with ETS’s management and organizational imaginative and prescient even earlier than the layoffs.
“I perceive that main ETS at the moment of nice change is a problem,” one worker wrote. “However we nonetheless lack a coherent, actionable technique, and management appears utterly out of contact with the group and its folks, to the purpose of it seeming disrespectful.”
Failure to Adapt?
Sevak started his video message by saying, “ETS is within the midst of a change.”
The identical might be mentioned of the standardized testing panorama as an entire.
A rising variety of establishments have deserted standardized take a look at necessities; all however three public college methods within the nation have adopted test-optional insurance policies, for example. And whereas the variety of SAT takers has fluctuated lately, GRE participation is down drastically, dropping from 541,750 in 2017 to 341,574 in 2021, as a cascade of graduate programs have eradicated their GRE necessities.
Different modifications within the admissions house, notably the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s ruling hanging down race-conscious admissions, may have a significant influence on testing. Critics of the ruling—together with the Division of Schooling in a report launched Thursday—have really useful eliminating or downgrading standardized take a look at scores within the application-review course of as one race-neutral method to offset the top of affirmative motion.
Akil Bello, senior director of advocacy and development at FairTest, which opposes testing necessities, mentioned the normalization of test-optional admissions has had a demonstrable influence on the enterprise fashions of take a look at suppliers—particularly people who haven’t tailored to the brand new panorama.
“It’s unquestioned that there have been vital rounds of layoffs at ACT, Faculty Board and now ETS,” Bello mentioned. “It’s not unreasonable to conclude that the undergraduate test-optional motion, in addition to the GRE exit motion, has considerably impacted their backside line.”
ETS has skilled its personal collection of modifications, a lot of them detrimental to the underside line. Based in 1947 in partnership with the Faculty Board to advertise the usage of the then nascent SAT, the group has since misplaced contracts to manage common assessments just like the LSAT and MCAT.
“ETS is especially fascinating as a result of they as soon as owned the rights to manage and promote all these assessments,” Bello mentioned. “For the reason that ’90s, it has misplaced most of them one after the other.”
In 2004, a minor schism between ETS and the Faculty Board led the latter to shift from ETS to Pearson as its fundamental take a look at scorer; 10 years later, that rift deepened when the Faculty Board opted to convey take a look at improvement, previously ETS’s purview, in home.
ETS’s contract with the Faculty Board to manage the SAT is up for renewal subsequent June. When requested by way of e-mail whether or not it was prone to renew the partnership, a spokesperson for Faculty Board mentioned the corporate doesn’t touch upon vendor relationships.
An ETS spokesperson mentioned that whereas there’s “nobody motive” inflicting the layoffs, the evaluation sector’s speedy transformation has led the group to re-examine its core choices.
“We’re keenly conscious of the challenges at the moment impacting schooling and evaluation organizations alike, and that the panorama is poised to proceed evolving, which is why we’re hyper centered on how finest to assist our clients sooner or later,” the spokesperson wrote in an e-mail.
ETS has branched out from the normal testing realm just lately, partnering with the Carnegie Basis in April to design an analysis for competency-based studying, which many considered as an acknowledgment by the 2 architects of the evaluation infrastructure that it was crumbling.
Michael Nettles, a veteran psychometrist who served as an academic adviser to former president Barack Obama, was senior vice chairman for coverage analysis and analysis at ETS for practically 20 years earlier than he left beneath ambiguous circumstances in January. Whereas he declined to touch upon the report about his causes for leaving or the group’s current trajectory, he did say that the standardized testing sector has modified tremendously over the course of his lengthy profession inside it.
“I’ve labored on this subject for 40-plus years now, and it’s all the time been altering, and proper now it’s very true, as a result of the college-going inhabitants is altering and getting extra numerous,” he mentioned. “The query of what assessments are getting used and the way worthwhile they are surely to people and establishments is actively being debated, and it’s a dynamic time in that sense.”
‘We Know the Rating’
Whereas Sevak repeatedly referred to the significance of ETS’s “monetary well being” in his video announcement of the layoffs, the spokesperson insisted that the group “continues to take care of a robust product portfolio.”
However responses from the worker engagement survey obtained by Inside Greater Ed present a definite insecurity within the group’s management and enterprise technique. Thirty-nine workers mentioned their detrimental expertise at ETS, taking particular purpose on the management crew, “complicated” inside communications and excessive employees turnover.
“There’s a common consensus throughout the corporate that Sr Management will not be sincere with employees, there isn’t any actual technique, and choices are being made that go in opposition to supporting information,” one worker wrote.
Staff described Sevak and the remainder of the ETS management crew—which one respondent likened to a “revolving door”—as “chaotic and disconnected,” “ineffective,” and “condescending.” They expressed fear concerning the near-constant menace of downsizing and the dearth of coherent or practical imaginative and prescient for the corporate’s future.
“Everyone seems to be working beneath the fixed chance of getting their job eradicated or outsourced,” one annoyed worker wrote. “We’ve gone by means of so many employees reductions over the previous 12 months that it’s demoralizing employees … Many individuals have left ETS, and lots of of those that stay at ETS are in search of jobs.”
An ETS spokesperson didn’t reply to questions concerning the worker engagement survey in time for publication.
Bello mentioned that as standardized assessments have turn into a much less normalized a part of faculty admissions, the organizations that personal and administer them have needed to make investments extra closely in advertising them as client merchandise.
The lower in take a look at takers, mixed with a increase in opponents—from an array of language assessments for worldwide college students, together with one from Duolingo, to undergraduate options like Cambridge and the Traditional Studying Take a look at adopted in Florida earlier this month—have pressured testing organizations to compete extra actively for market share.
ETS, Bello mentioned, has been particularly aggressive on this pivot. This 12 months the group dramatically shortened the size of its marquee assessments, the GRE and TOEFL, reducing every in half with out lowering value—a transfer he believes is an try and promote its merchandise to scholar shoppers.
“What issues me is the extra they’re appearing as companies, the much less they’re appearing as academic establishments,” Bello mentioned.
Some say there’s motive to be cautiously optimistic concerning the conventional testing mannequin ETS helped convey into being. Nettles believes there are “nonetheless loyal customers” however that a point of adaptation is more and more inevitable and flag bearers like ETS are going to need to prepared the ground.
“The evaluation firms are nonetheless main a lot of the enterprise and, you recognize, a lot of the main focus as a consequence of that, and so seeing how they reply goes to be actually essential over the subsequent few years,” he mentioned.
However ETS workers wrote within the engagement survey that the group has not been adequately aware of modifications within the sector. One disgruntled worker wrote that leaders ought to “regulate their expectations to the fact of the markets we function in” and talk extra overtly with that actuality in thoughts—specifically, the free-falling supremacy of ETS within the testing subject and the diminished significance of testing usually.
“Management must be extra respectful of the opinions of the individuals who have been on this marketplace for 20 years,” the worker wrote. “We all know the rating higher than you suppose.”
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