>Christine,
>
>Could you elaborate about ETS being a "for-profit nonprofit"? According
>to the NYRB article on Lehman's book, they make money by selling tests
>and charging fees. And they pay "extravagant employee compensation".
>Are there profits on top of this? Where do they go?
>
>RO
>
That's what I meant 'extravagant employee compensation'. They are a monopoly
in the testing business, so they can essentially charge whatever they want.
They can't produce official profits... but where is all this revenue they're
generating going to. I'd have to go to their web site, but GRE tests cost
well over $100 each, with over 100,000 people taking them annually ($12
million). Some of the other professional tests cost hundreds of dollars. I'm
not sure what SAT tests cost to take, but probably $50-75 times about 1-1.5
million students, especially when some students take them many times. Plus
they recently went into the test preparation business, which is really
dubious if the test is supposed to be unteachable. How many employees do
they have? Do they have a staff of a hundred writing each test, or does each
earn $100,000/yr. Ralph Nader had evidence that they were building this big
'campus' with sport courts and had all sorts of peripheral stuff that
they're funding there.
The statistics they give in the news about SAT scores between states and districts are really misleading because there is tremendous variation between the percentage of students taking the test.
______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com