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The Pillory is where persons convicted by Carl Willis of being a burden to society are publicly rebuked, and put to shame for their unscrupulous actions! If your name appears below, you may appeal your punishment by emailing me a detailed, apologetic essay of 500 words or more, excerpts of which I may publish at my discretion. Simple whining will not be tolerated. I welcome viewer feedback, especially the testimony of others victimized by the following riff-raff: |
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Nov. 27, 2003 Educational Testing Service (ETS); Kurt Landgraf, president of ETS The Crime(s): Parasitism; Monopolism; Unlawful lobbying; Blind corporate greed; OTHER CHARGES FOLLOW. Students, watch out for this hungry parasite! ETS is the shadowy, ostensibly "non-profit" corporation in Ewing, New Jersey that produces and sells the SAT, the GRE, and the AP Tests. Chances are, it's already got its tentacles in your wallet. As the "tollbooth on the highway of education," ETS and Kurt Landgraf have repeatedly shown that their business has no interest in producing a meaningful test, selling it fairly, or staying true to the image of a non-profit. The 2000-person company sucks down more than $0.6 billion in revenues annually, turning an ever-increasing profit to boot. This income, paid by students who are essentially forced to buy the SAT and other tests, finances exorbitant corporate salaries and a lush campus, the property alone of which is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. President Landgraf is purported to be the second-highest-paid person in education in all of North America in 2003. He curried favor with upper management recently by dishing out $300,000 bonuses (that's just the bonus, mind you). The company also uses student test fees to maintain a highly effective political lobbying office in Washington, D.C., the purpose of which is to advance the "gatekeeper" testing agenda that keeps this parasite alive and growing. In 1997, the parasite was investigated by The New York Times over concerns about the fairness and interpretation of its testing products. In the articles emerging from that investigation, Nordheimer and Franz delivered a stinging condemnation of ETS for its failure to correct profitable misconceptions about the meaning and precision of the tests, and for concealing the incidence of cheating. In 1999, Education Week reporter David Hoff released details of the "non-profit's" burgeoning wealth in an article entitled, "Testing ETS." Earlier, in 1985, David Owen had lambasted the company in a bitingly negative review (None of the Above). The media has had nothing good to say about ETS, because there is nothing good to say about ETS. I contend that ETS holds a monopoly on the GRE test product, in that the company has effectively forced any potential alternatives from competing. Since the test costs $115 and the more times one takes the test the better one does, it also blatantly discriminates against those with limited ability to pay. ETS has no satisfactory explanation for what GRE or SAT test results mean--ETS can only tell you some of what they do not mean. I would love to see Kurt Landgraf sent back to college (preferably to take a Business Ethics 101 class), and have to work an evening shift at Wal-Mart just to make ends meet. Then I'd like to force him to pay me $115 for a sheet of toilet paper, after which I'll turn around and spend the money on a new set of titanium golf clubs! Maybe he'd come to understand why students revile him with such visceral passion. Students: Do not buy products sold by ETS. Universities: Do not endorse or employ ETS products in your admissions screening. Employees of ETS: Seek employment elsewhere. Learn to be a productive member of society. Management of ETS: Get a job, you filthy freeloading tapeworm! $100 AWARD to any institution that renounces any consideration of ETS test scores in its application process whatsoever, in the year 2003. |
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