A class action has been filed against Educational Testing Service, Inc., on behalf of all persons who were falsely told that they received a failing score on a test known as the Praxis Principles of Learning and Teaching for Grades 7 Through 12 (PPLT) between January 2003 and April 2004. The action seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

The lawsuit alleges that ETS incorrectly scored the PPLT test when it was offered in 18 states during the applicable period. Most primary and secondary school systems require teacher applicants to pass this test before they may be hired. ETS has admitted that more than 4,100 persons who took the PPLT test were told that they failed it despite the fact that they had actually passed the test. As a result of the erroneous reporting, the action alleges that numerous teacher applicants have been denied employment, and have suffered other forms of damage.

More than 1,200 teacher applicants in Ohio alone were denied instructional licenses, and perhaps jobs, because of grading errors that had them failing certification tests they actually passed. Ohio had more false failures than any other state. About 150 Kentucky teaching candidates were also incorrectly graded, according to an ETS spokesman. The private, nonprofit testing organization, which also produces and grades the widely used Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) for college admissions, discovered the grading error in early July 2004, and has associated the failures as "human error" in grading of the exam's essay portion. The organization admitted that it noticed lower scores than in the past and a review of the test-grading found more stringent scoring than required. The people who monitored the grading program have purportedly been taken off the program.

Bob Schaeffer, spokesman for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, has criticized ETS for holding too much power over the careers of prospective teachers without any public oversight of its methods. "There needs to be a public investigation of the ETS, and not just have it left to private corporation public relations to clean this up." The NCFOT, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a political lobbying group working to end the use of standardized testing, especially as it may lead to racial, class, gender or cultural barriers. It is apparently not involved in the present lawsuit.