SAT - Scoring Problems of October 2005 Tests

Scoring Problems of October 2005 Tests

In March 2006, it was announced that a small percentage of the SATs taken in October 2005 had been scored incorrectly due to the test papers being moist and not scanning properly, and that some students had received erroneous scores. The College Board announced they would change the scores for the students who were given a lower score than they earned, but at this point many of those students had already applied to colleges using their original scores. The College Board decided not to change the scores for the students who were given a higher score than they earned. A lawsuit was filed in 2005 by about 4,400 students who received an incorrect low score on the SAT. The class-action suit was settled in August 2007 when The College Board and another company that administers the college-admissions test announced they would pay $2.85 million to over 4,000 students. Under the agreement each student can either elect to receive $275 or submit a claim for more money if he or she feels the damage was even greater. A similar scoring error occurred on a secondary school admission test in 2010-2011 when the ERB (Educational Records Bureau) announced after the admission process was over that an error had been made in the scoring of the tests of 2010 (17%) of the students who had taken the Independent School Entrance Examination for admission to private secondary schools for 2011. Commenting on the effect of the error on students' school applications in the New York Times, David Clune, President of the ERB stated "It is a lesson we all learn at some point — that life isn’t fair."