Scholastic testing service rapped in Nader report

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader released Tuesday a 550-page investigative report on the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which produces the Scholastic Aptitude Test, the Graduate Record Examinations, and other standardized tests common throughout US high schools and colleges. The report charges that claims by ETS that these exams predict students' success in college or graduate school "can be described as a specialized kind of fraud," in Mr. Nader's words.

The report, called "The Reign of ETS," claims that 90 percent of the time the tests predict first-year grades no better than would a random process such as a roll of the dice, and that the tests are heavily biased toward well-to-do families and against minorities.