The Educational Testing Service, one of the biggest testing organizations in the United States, has agreed to pay $11.1 million to settle a class-action lawsuit about errors in the scoring of a widely used teacher licensing examination, according to court-approved settlement papers released yesterday.
The exams, known as the Praxis series, are designed, administered and scored by the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J. They are used by 39 states and United States jurisdictions to determine a person's eligibility to be licensed as a teacher.
The lawsuit was filed by test takers and involved a part of the test series given from January 2003 to April 2004. The settlement was given preliminary approval this week by Judge Sarah S. Vance of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
According to the settlement papers, the errors came to light after a state that had used the tests questioned the results. When the testing service investigated, it found that it had graded some answers too stringently during the period in question. About 27,000 people who took the exam received lower scores than they should have, and 4,100 of them were wrongly told they had failed.
E.T.S. said in a statement yesterday that both sides had agreed not to comment on the settlement, except to confirm that an agreement had been reached.
The statement also said that an $11.1 million fund "will be used to provide cash payments to plaintiffs for things like lost wages, decreased earning capacity, and other damages," and that notices informing people of their legal rights would be sent to test takers, appropriate educational institutions, teachers unions and state departments of education.
Test takers who were falsely told they had failed will be able to file papers to receive about $500 each, or they can try to show that they suffered greater damages. Those whose scores were passing but lower than they should have been will also be eligible to file for damages.
Robert A. Schaeffer, who served as an expert for the plaintiffs and is public education director for FairTest, an advocacy group that says standardized tests are overused, said he hoped the settlement would set "an important precedent."
"The test maker — in this case, the Educational Testing Service — is having to pay for a huge mistake which disrupted thousands of lives," Mr. Schaeffer said.
Paul Perrea, one of the named plaintiffs in the case, said that he had difficulty finding a job after he was told he had failed the test.
"It was a real albatross hanging around my neck," said Mr. Perrea, a former computer engineer who was trying to move into teaching.
After the testing service told him he had actually passed, he quickly landed a job teaching high school physics and biology. He said he applauded the settlement.
The settlement announcement comes days after revelations by the College Board that 4,600 high school students who took the SAT exam in October received mistaken scores, most of them too low.
Shawn M. Raiter, a lawyer in St. Paul who represented families in a lawsuit over errors in tests given in Minnesota schools, said there had been several class-action suits involving standardized testing organizations in recent years.
"As long as standardized testing companies continue to make errors in what are regarded as high-stakes tests, you can expect to continue to see cases filed," Mr. Raiter said.