By Justin Hsieh
Lawyers filed a class-action lawsuit against the College Board on Tuesday, on behalf of students who had technical difficulties in submitting their answers to Advanced Placement (AP) exams last week. The suit charged the College Board with ignoring accessibility and equity issues in administering AP exams online, and demanded that the organizations score the responses of students who were unable to submit their answers instead of requiring them to make up their exams in June.
The College Board announced earlier this year that it would administer AP exams online for the first time after the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools across the country and world to close their campuses. Instead of its traditional paper exams, which are multiple hours long and held in proctored venues, this year’s exams would be 45 minutes long, offered online, open note and taken at home.
After the first days of testing took place last week, some students complained that their exam windows had not allowed them to submit their answers. These students were informed that they would have to request to make up their exams in June.
“The feeling of panicking and pacing back and forth while waiting for my photo to submit was terrible, to say the least,” junior Wesley Lin said of his AP Chemistry exam. “When I got the message at the end of the test that one of my submissions had failed to go through, I was frustrated and angry that I had put in so much work and stress just to have to retake the test again in June.”
On Sunday, however, the College Board announced that it would be providing a backup submission option for the second week of testing, in which students would be allowed to email their responses in the event that they were unable to submit them properly. For exam security purposes, the College Board said, the backup option would not be available for answers to tests taken in the first week.
The College Board said that most submission errors occurred because of students’ outdated browsers or failure to see messages marking the end of the exam, and that of the 2.2 million AP exams taken in the first week of testing only 1% encountered technical glitches. Tuesday’s lawsuit, however, cited “reports of anywhere between 5% and 20% of examinees [who] were unable to submit their responses” during the first three days of testing, and blamed exam creators for submission difficulties.
“After one day of testing, it became clear that the College Board and [Educational Testing Services, the organization contracted to create and administer AP exams] had failed to fairly, competently, or equitably administer the AP exams,” the suit read. “The students who relied on AP scores for the financial benefits of college placement and credit experienced technical glitches, timing issues and a heightened level of anxiety and distress.”
The suit demanded that the College Board accept first-week test answers from students who can show through timestamp, photo or email that they were completed on time.
“Applications like Google Docs allow you to view the version history, and Photos allows you to view the timestamp for when photos were taken,” Lin said. “This, in my opinion, would be sufficient evidence if provided to the College Board to count as a submission.”
The suit also accused the College Board of ignoring concerns that online AP exams were unfair to students with disabilities or students without computers, reliable internet access, or quiet spaces to work.
“The College Board moved the AP exams to students’ homes under the present conditions despite [acknowledging that it could prevent low-income and rural students from participating],” the suit read. “In doing so, the College Board knowingly discriminated against under-resourced students, disabled students, and students in remote locations, and it failed to honor its commitments to students and their families.”
The College Board said it took measures to accommodate students with disabilities or without access to technology or internet connection. College Board Chief Risk Officer and general counsel Peter Schwartz called the lawsuit “a PR stunt masquerading as a legal complaint.” It was “wrong factually and baseless legally,” he said in a statement, and “the College Board will vigorously and confidently defend against it, and expect to prevail.”
Interim director Bob Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest), a nonprofit organization that works to end misuse of standardized testing and was one of the plaintiffs in the suit, said that despite warnings about “access, technology and security problems” the College Board “rushed ‘untested’ AP computerized exams into the marketplace in order to preserve its largest revenue-generating program.”
Schwartz and the College Board said that the decision to offer AP exams online was made in accordance with student demand.
“When the country shut down due to coronavirus, we surveyed AP students nationwide, and an overwhelming 91 percent reported a desire to take the AP Exam at the end of the course,” Schwartz said. “Within weeks, we redesigned the AP Exams so that they could be taken at home. Nearly 3 million AP Exams have been taken over the first seven days. Those students who were unable to successfully submit their exam can still take a makeup and have the opportunity to earn college credit.”
The College Board has said it is also prepared to offer the SAT in a digital format should schools not reopen in the fall, a plan commented upon by the authors of the suit.
“The College Board intends to move all of its assessment to an at-home format, including the SAT,” the suit read. “However, this year’s AP exam administration makes it perfectly clear that until the technical issues, the digital divide and other inequities are adequately addressed, it cannot do so.”
Even with the outcome of the suit pending, some students have already resigned to the frustration of not being able to submit their answers.
“It’s probably too late at this point [to allow for emailed submissions],” said an FVHS junior who took AP United States History. “It really [is unfortunate] too, since if they had figured out the email thing right away after the first exam, we wouldn’t be having this problem.”
