June Stock, right, enjoys a serenade at CTB/McGraw Hill's 85th anniversary celebration at company headquarters in Ryan Ranch in June. Others, from right, are John Stewart, former CTB senior product manager, company president Ellen Haley and John Covington, schools superintendent in Kansas City, Mo.
After McGraw-Hill bought the California Testing Bureau in 1965, the idea of moving company brass to New York came up two or three times over the years.
"Thankfully, they saw the wisdom of keeping it intact here," said June Duran Stock, a retired vice president of the company.
Stock's connection to CTB is lifelong ? her parents, Ethel and Willis Clark, founded the company in Los Angeles in 1926 and moved it to Monterey in 1960. Stock was sometimes the first child her father tried out a test on.
The company, which has no intention of leaving Monterey, celebrated its 85th anniversary with a party at company headquarters in Ryan Ranch in June. There are 450 employees in Monterey and 650 companywide, said President Ellen Haley.
CTB/McGraw Hill is a major player in the ever-changing testing industry, Haley said.
The company's motto of "helping the student help the child" hasn't changed, but the ways of reaching that goal have.
Today, Haley said, more testing is done online and there's more open-ended performance testing, where questions can be answered in a variety of ways.
Online testing is more than a way of getting test results back to teachers and students instantly. It has allowed development of tests that can adapt to a student's skills as the student completes the test.
If a student demonstrates knowledge in one area, the test can skip over additional questions and go on to tougher material.
The scoring of tests isn't all
electronic."We still have human scorers," Haley said.
Tests done on paper can be scored within five days, she said. The company's offices in Indianapolis do a lot of the paper scoring.
"The teacher gets the scores online," Haley said, and can adapt her teaching accordingly.
Over time, test questions change.
"We follow the created standards," Haley said. "We want to test what's being taught."
About half of CTB's school business is mandated tests. The company does business in all 50 states and in 49 countries.
School testing has been controversial in recent years because of the No Child Left Behind Act, which came during the George W. Bush administration. The law's aim is getting every child in America to grade-level proficiency in reading and writing by 2014.
"That's not realistic," Haley said. But she does believe that "all (students) should be showing growth."
Earlier this year, CTB acquired Bookette, a Monterey software company. CTB has bought other companies, mainly for their strategic value.
"We're still hiring," said Haley. The staff includes 50 who have doctoral degrees.
Staffing in Monterey has gone up and down over the years. Before a restructuring in November 2005 that eliminated 77 jobs, there were 750 employees. A test scoring center closed in Salinas in 2006. Those operations were transferred to other company plants, and 40 local jobs were eliminated.
Today, CTB/McGraw Hill has about 400 employees based in Monterey, said Mary Skafidas, a company spokeswoman. That's up from 350 two years ago, Skafidas said, "and there's 10 jobs posted" now.
The workers aren't always in the office, Skafidas said, because they often travel to visit clients.
Being in Monterey helps attract employees from other areas, said Haley, who came from Michigan to join the company 25 years ago.
Stock's parents moved the company to Monterey for the same reason so many others came to the county ? they were frequent visitors who liked the area so much they decided to live here full-time.
And with so many colleges and graduate schools nearby, it's a good environment for a testing company.
"It's becoming an educational center," Stock said.
Lane Wallace can be reached at 646-4478 or mhbusiness@montereyherald.com.
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