Why can't I get paid for failing a test?
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Failing the New York State teachers’ exam really paid off — especially for a Queens man who learned this month he’s getting a $2 million windfall over it.
Roughly 5,200 black and Hispanic ex-Big Apple teachers and once-aspiring educators are expected to collect more than $1.8 billion in judgments after the city stopped fighting a nearly three-decade federal discrimination lawsuit that found a certification exam was biased.
It’s the largest legal payout in city history.
As of Friday, 225 people who failed the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test used for teacher licensing from 1994 to 2014 had already been notified they’re getting settlements of at least $1 million, according to an analysis of Manhattan federal court records.
Court rulings found the exam violated civil-rights laws, allowing far more white candidates to pass.
The case is expected to generate hundreds of other future million-dollar awards.
Herman Grim, 64, of Queens, on July 5 was awarded the biggest judgment to date — a jaw-dropping $2,055,383.
It includes $1,583,114 in back pay for time never clocked, lost interest accrued, and other compensation.
The class-action suit dates back to 1996 when it was filed on behalf of Elsa Gulino and three other teachers against the former Board of Education, which once ran the city’s public schools before it was disbanded by the state Legislature to give that power to the mayoral-controlled Department of Education.
The plaintiffs targeted both the state and city, but an appeals court ultimately let Albany off the hook since the city is the teachers’ employer — even though the city argued it had no control over the testing.
The case has had a winding road through the court system, including repeated trips to appellate courts.
A 2003 trial ended in the city’s favor, but the tests were ruled discriminatory in 2012 by the third Manhattan federal judge to handle the case.
More than 90% of white test-takers passed the 80-question multiple-choice and essay Liberal Arts and Sciences Test between March 1993 and June 1995 — one version of which had questions such as asking teachers to explain the meaning of a painting by pop artist Andy Warhol.
But black applicants on average scored passing grades only 53% of the time, and Latinos had an even lower passing rate, just 50%, according to the lawsuit.
The failures resulted in full-time teachers getting demoted to substitutes and prevented aspiring educators from getting hired.
Some became career subs, others found teaching jobs outside the city, and the rest left the profession.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs brought in experts who testified that much of the discrepancy in scores could be attributed to some of the questions being culturally biased in favor of whites.
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I am not saying that the payouts, etc. are to be justified, but I suppose it is possible that the way the questions were written, you have a better chance if you are white.
For example, if some of the questions on pop culture referenced rap music, and based on that type of music is more popular with black people, they would have a better chance to answer correctly.
But, I think it i pretty much impossible to set up test questions on something like culture that one group or another would not ave more knowledge of.
