Test industry
Test industry as defined here includes private and semi-public companies and institutions that develop, carry out or evaluate standardized tests for decisions regarding access to education. Examples are university admission in subjects with restricted admission (medicine, law) or the general determination of university entrance qualification or language skills.
The test industry emerged in the USA in the middle of the 20th century and continues to have its largest market there. In the German-speaking area, it plays less of a role for educational tests, as final exams are carried out more decentrally, and central exams (such as the Central Abitur ) are developed by the ministerial bureaucracy itself.
The largest company in the test industry is Educational Testing Service (ETS) with approximately 2,700 employees and annual sales of $ 900 million; its best-known products are the college entrance test SAT and the English test TOEFL . He enjoys high academic respect in America: Scientists alternate between employment at ETS and university positions, and ETS employees regularly publish in specialist journals such as Psychometrika .
In 2007 Wolfram Meyerhöfer saw behind the PISA studies not least the intention of the test industry to create a European market for standardized tests.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Gerard Giordano: How Testing Came to Dominate American Schools. The History of Educational Assessment . Peter Lang, New York 2005, ISBN 0-8204-7255-7
- ↑ Thomas Jahnke, Wolfram Meyerhöfer (ed.): Pisa & Co. Critique of a program . 2nd Edition. Franzbecker, Hildesheim 2007, ISBN 978-3-88120-464-4 .