City to Appeal

Teacher Certifying Test Goes on Trial

By HOWARD MEGDAL

A Federal appeals court panel ruled that a suit by former city Teachers alleging that the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test (LAST) required for permanent certification is discriminatory against African-Americans and Hispanics should move forward, reversing the trial judge's decision.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Ruling has 'huge' impact.

The Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals referred the case to U.S. District Court to determine a new standard for evaluating the LAST, which had a 91 to 94- percent success rate among whites, but just 51 to 62 percent among African Americans and 47 to 55 percent among Hispanics, between 1993 and 1999.

Overrules Famous Judge

The Bloomberg administration said last week it will petition for a rehearing of the case.

The original U.S. District Judge in the case, the late Constance Baker Motley, had said that the test was legal under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Ms. Motley, the first black woman to serve as a Federal judge, was best known as the attorney who wrote the legal complaint in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954. She passed away in 2005.

"As to the merits of appellants' Title VII claim, we find both legal and factual errors in the district court's holding in favor of appellees," the appellate judges said in their decision. "We are not convinced, however, that the judgment in favor of appellants is warranted as a matter of law."

"This is a huge deal, be cause the court is saying the judge made a mistake in deciding whether this particular test is job-related," UFT President Randi Weingarten said following the ruling. The UFT is not involved in the suit, though it filed a similar lawsuit over LAST in state court several years ago which was dismissed.

Test 'Not Reliable'

Attorneys for the plaintiffs have said they do not object to statewide tests for certification, but rather the specifics of the current exam.

"The objection we have is that there is a science to developing tests and that they are using a test here that was not properly developed and is not reliable for producing any meaningful information about the test-taker's ability," said Joshua Sohn, representing the plaintiffs.

But Judge Motley based her ruling on the idea that the essay section of the test was more heavily weighted than the Appeals judges determined it to be. She stated that because the essay test was "job-related," the entire test could be classified that way.

"It is impossible for the test as a whole to be valid simply because one section is job-related," the judges wrote in their decision. "That is, because higher performance on one section may compensate for lower performance on another, one particular section could never be the sole reason that a particular group fails the exam."

Another plaintiffs' attorney, Barbara Olshansky, estimated that between 5,000 and 8,000 former Teachers are covered by the lawsuit.