We Heard What You Said
In an effort to improve the administration of all ETS assessments, ETS has recommitted its efforts to achieving "100 percent quality" to ensure a flawless testing experience. Stephen Pote, Chief Quality Officer at ETS, has an extensive background and experience in driving successful quality and process initiatives.
Pote is leading the 100 Percent Quality Initiative — an ongoing ETS commitment to meet and exceed stakeholders' expectations in the area of quality. These include accuracy, timeliness, completeness and validity of test design, delivery, scoring and reporting. ETS President and CEO Kurt Landgraf made improving the Praxis program Pote's top priority.
"ETS is responding to the need for quality — and taking action," said Pote. "Anything less than 100 percent means that one or more people are not getting the quality results they expect and deserve."
An end-to-end review of the Praxis program was performed in early 2006. This helped identify specific areas for improvement in all aspects of development and execution. Based on customer comments and feedback, ETS is working hard to flawlessly execute in the following areas:
- test registration
- customer service
- test-taker advocacy
- test administration
- score reporting and accuracy, completeness, timeliness and content validity
- responsiveness to requests
- increased communication
- understanding and partnering with clients to respond to evolving customer and client needs to improve pass rates, decrease teacher shortages, offer tests for emerging new licensure areas and meet state and federal standards and requirements
"We aren't perfect, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't aspire to be. We have spent the past 18 months improving our web service, customer contact center interaction and other services. Recently implemented process improvements have helped to drastically reduce make-ups within the Praxis program. Significant improvements are visible in recent Praxis administrations," said Pote.
"Educational testing is an industry where millions of test takers' lives are affected not only by their performance, but also by those who administer the test," said Pote. "As long as there remains one teacher candidate or test taker whose life may be impacted by a test administration error, it is unacceptable for us to be satisfied with maintaining the status quo. We must strive for perfection."