Michael Goodine's Blog, page 3

Where is my TOEFL Registration Number?

People often ask where they can find their TOEFL Registration Number.  This is usually because the school they are applying to has asked for it. Sadly, there is no TOEFL Registration Number.  It doesn’t exist. The schools are probably asking for your TOEFL appointment number.  To find it you should log in to your TOEFL account and […]

Janet Garcia Confirmed as ETS President

ETS has finally confirmed the appointment of Janet Garcia as president of ETS. Garcia currently serves as CEO of PSI Services, a position she will continue to hold as she takes the reins at ETS. CEO Amit Sevak will remain with ETS, perhaps with more time to devote to his work as a globe-trotting public […]

ETS to Lay Off 757 More Employees

The Educational Testing Service will lay off 757 employees in California at the end of the year. According to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle, this comes as Measurement, Inc takes over the scoring of several tests included in ETS’s longstanding CAASPP-ELPAC contract. That contract, which runs through 2027, is quite lucrative for ETS, […]

ETS 990 Form for 2024 Now Available

ETS’s 990 form for the year ending September 2024 is now available via Propublica.  Some of this information was available in the audit published earlier this year, but much of it is new.  A few things are worth mentioning: Program service revenues were 908 million dollars.  That’s down 10  million from 2023.  It is the […]

Writing Research at LanguageCert

LANGUAGECERT has published a new article by Leda Lampropoulou, Irene Stoukou, PhD and David Coniam called “The Relationship between Language Complexity and Test-taker Achievement on a High-Stakes Test of Writing.” It compares lexical, syntactic and discourse features of 2,746 test taker responses from the LanguageCert test at the B1, B2 and C1 levels.

NABP Task Force to Review Suitability of TOEFL

The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) has convened a task force to determine whether foreign trained pharmacists should still be required to submit TOEFL scores as part of their credentialing process. The resolution establishing the task force notes that “questions have been raised as to whether the TOEFL iBT effectively measures English proficiency […]

New Official Guide to the TOEFL in January 2026

I attended two recent online events hosted by ETS. At an ETS EMEA event, I learned that: The new Official Guide to the TOEFL will be published in January. Questions in the reading section of the new TOEFL are not all weighted equally. Some are worth more than others. At the ETS Japan event about […]

TOEFL Experience Days in China

ETS recently hosted a paid of big “TOEFL iBT Experience Day” events in Beijing and Shanghai. Participants in each received a booklet containing three official practice tests matching the new format of the test.  That seems to have been a print-only thing so you’ll have to ask a friend in China to mail you a […]

Socra Partners With ETS on TOEFL App

I saw that Korean ed-tech Socra AI (known as Riiid until about two weeks ago) has entered into a licensing deal to create a TOEFL prep platform called Santa TOEFL.  Socra says that the platform will “[integrate] official ETS content, providing learners worldwide with updated practice tests and learning solutions aligned with the January 2026 […]

New Substack!

My latest substack summarizes all the news you need to know about English testing. This one was sent out before the news from Cambridge, though I did send out a bonus issue about that story. The substack now has 322 well-informed subscribers, which I think is pretty great. The photo of the week shows off […]