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College Board, test company are sued over SAT errors

ST. PAUL, Minn. - A high school senior whose SAT was incorrectly scored low is suing the board that oversees the exam and the testing company that was hired.

The lawsuit, filed late Friday in Minnesota, is the first since last month's announcement that 4,411 students got incorrectly low scores and that more than 600 had better results than they deserved on the October test.

It names the nonprofit College Board and the for-profit Pearson Educational Measurement, which has offices in Minnesota's Hennepin County.

"Any type of a high-stakes test that impacts a life event like college, scholarships and financial aid has to be scored with 100 percent accuracy," St. Paul attorney T. Joseph Snodgrass said Saturday. "There is no room for error in this type of a situation."

Pearson spokesman David Hakensen said the company won't comment on pending litigation. College Board spokeswoman Chiara Coletti also declined to comment.

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys for an unidentified high school senior in Dix Hills, N.Y., seeks class action status. Lawyers want to allow anyone who took the test in October except those who got a marked-up score to join the lawsuit.

The suit also seeks unspecified damages, an order requiring adjustment of the scores and a refund of the test fee.

Test-takers whose scores were made too low had their results corrected, but the College Board has declined to fix the inflated scores. That has angered some college officials who say they could unfairly influence admissions and scholarship decisions.

The SAT is taken by more than 2-million students and used by many colleges as a factor in admissions. The 2,400-point exam measures reasoning skills in reading, writing and math.

The October test was taken by nearly a half-million students, so the error affected less than 1 percent of the results.

[Last modified April 9, 2006, 00:21:05]