New York City’s tab for serving up flawed teacher certification exams decades ago now tops $850 million in damages paid, with still more reckoning to come, according to an attorney who successfully argued that the exams unfairly discriminated against Black and Latino test-takers.
Around 5,200 people who failed the tests have put in claim forms for lost wages, pensions, and other costs by a June deadline, according to the plaintiffs’ attorney, Joshua Sohn.
In 2021, when there were an estimated 4,700 claimants in the class-action lawsuit, the city agreed to set aside $1.8 billion to fund future judgments rather than continue the decadeslong legal battle.
“It’s taken way too long to get here,” Sohn said. “You can never give people back what they lost, what was taken from them. But it’s important that we’ve been fighting for them. And fighting for their entitlement to validate their experience.”
The damages total will grow as the hundreds of outstanding damages claims from test-takers are evaluated. The payments – part of the largest-ever payout by the city – represent lost wages, pensions and benefits for nearly 3,000 recipients thus far, Sohn said.
Stefan Mooklal from the city’s Law Department emailed the department’s response.
“The city mounted vigorous challenges to court rulings holding the city liable for a test developed and mandated by the state, but did not prevail. We continue to believe that those rulings were mistaken and unfairly burdened the city with costly judgments. But after our challenges proved unsuccessful, in 2021 the parties agreed that it was in their best interests to bring this long-standing case to a close,” the statement said.
Problems with the exam
At issue were a series of tests for acquiring and retaining teaching licenses in the city, including the National Teacher Examination Core Battery, or NTE, and its successor, the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, or LAST.
The class-action lawsuit was brought in 1996 by four…
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