College Board Faces Litigation

The College Board is under increased pressure to beef up their security measures.

Over the years, we’ve reported on many instances in which cheating has been uncovered on the SAT (and ACT for that matter, too). A number of these instances have occurred in Asia but we’ve also reported on instances of cheating right here at home in the U.S.A., like in Rancho Penasquitos, California or in Great Neck, New York. College Board has likely been frustrated by these instances of cheating but today, the organization finds itself not only frustrated but also as a defendant in a class-action lawsuit for, as the claim stipulates, “breach[ing] its fiduciary duty by recycling old exam questions, including those that have been publicly disseminated prior to the SAT exam.”

Parent Sues College Board Over SAT

As Valerie Strauss reports for “The Washington Post” in a piece entitled “College Board sued over allegedly recycled SAT test questions,” “A class-action lawsuit was just filed in U.S. District Court in Florida by the father of a student who took the SAT on Aug. 25. Students reported the test included questions that had appeared on a 2017 SAT administered in Asia and that had been put on social media. The lawsuit, filed by the Nussbaum Law Group in New York City and Criden & Love in Miami, is against the College Board, which owns the SAT, and the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT.”

Security breaches for College Board are nothing new of course. Select scores are withheld from test-takers by the organization on just about every testing administration over cheating concerns. But as cheating has become more and more prevalent, notably in nations like South Korea and China, it’s high time College Board and ETS beef up security measures. Clearly what they’ve been doing just doesn’t cut it. And while we don’t think this class-action lawsuit will, in itself, bolster their security measures, one thing’s for sure: they’re not happy about having to defend their security measures in an American court of law.

What do our readers think? Do you think College Board has an obligation to test-takers to improve their security measures? Let us know your thoughts by posting a Comment below. We look forward to hearing from you.