The Educational Testing Service (ETS) has a new report out. In a nutshell, one blog summarizes the findings as ‘American kids are dumb’.

The Economic Collapse Blog reported:

“As Americans, we tend to be pretty full of ourselves, and this is especially true of our young people.  But do we really have reason for such pride?  According to a shocking new report from the Educational Testing Service, Americans between the ages of 20 and 34 are way behind young adults in other industrialized nations when it comes to literacy, mathematics and technological proficiency.  Even though more Americans than ever are going to college, we continue to fall farther and farther behind intellectually.  So what does this say about us?  Sadly, the truth is that Americans are stupid.  Our education system is an abysmal failure, and our young people spend most of their free time staring at the television, their computers or their mobile devices.  And until we are honest with ourselves about this, our intellectual decline is going to get even worse.”

Read the whole thing.

When I read this my first reaction was to laugh, mainly because I know who ETS heels to and that their activity appears mainly to be a validation vehicle for Common Core and the related testing.

ETS is besties with Pearson and the College Board.

“The new PARCC blueprints and test assessments are the result of several rounds of reviews and revisions conducted over the last year and a half by classroom teachers, higher education faculty, PARCC staff members and consultants, and ETS and Pearson staff.” – TheJournal.com

*******

“ETS, Pearson, and the College Board have formed a collaboration to explore how innovative  approaches and best practices in high‐quality assessments can be applied to the creation of a common
assessment system.

Our objective is to work with states to develop an assessment
system that will improve learning.

We propose to design an integrated system that can provide  accountability data, instructionally actionable information, and
can inform teacher professional development and evaluation.
Combined, we have extensive experience in the research, development, and delivery of a wide variety of assessments. 

We have worked within and across all 50 states and have worked
together collaboratively for many years. Our expertise includes
the development of innovative computer based assessment
systems and student growth measures, and the application of a
wide range of item types and scoring approaches to provide
timely feedback to  teachers and students.”
– PearsonAssessment.com, Thoughts On The Assessment of Common Core Standards

ETS has been given a small fortune by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation: $24,621,840.00

Reminder: