If you mention the name ETS—or Educational Testing Service—you’re bound to come across an anxious high school or college student who will recount a horror story about their test-taking experience.
And while it’s true that ETS—the world’s largest, private, nonprofit educational testing, research and assessment organization—is best known for its standardized tests, the testing company has also been actively working to educate the public that it does more than simply create exams.
Through its Center for Advocacy and Philanthropy (CAAP), ETS has been leading an effort to bridge the educational divide and improve outcomes for individuals and organizations throughout the nation.
Philanthropy and advocacy
Created in 2013, the Center has been using the ETS brand and its fiscal dollars to invest in community-based projects that focus on eliminating educational disparities, particularly within underserved and underrepresented communities.
“We see our advocacy role as raising awareness and shining the spotlight on what I like to call these burgeoning issues that are critical in education,” says Lenora Green, executive director of CAAP and a longtime employee of ETS. “They may not be well-known issues, but they will be. Or if they are well known, there is a lot of misunderstanding around them.”
Philanthropy is hardly new to the 69-year-old company that is headquartered on a sprawling green-acre campus in Princeton, New Jersey, and has regional offices around the United States, including San Antonio, Washington, D.C., and the Bay Area.
