Pandazides v. Virginia Bd. of Educ., Civ. A. No. 90-1081-A.

• Decision Date: 16 November 1992
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 90-1081-A.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia
• Parties: Sophia P. PANDAZIDES, Plaintiff, v. VIRGINIA BOARD of EDUCATION, Defendant.

804 F. Supp. 794

Sophia P. PANDAZIDES, Plaintiff, v. VIRGINIA BOARD of EDUCATION, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 90-1081-A.

United States District Court, E.D. Virginia, Alexandria Division.

September 28, 1992.

As Amended November 16, 1992.

Steven D. Stone, Alexandria, Va., for plaintiff.

Mary Sue Terry, Atty. Gen. of Va., Joan W. Murphy, Asst. Atty. Gen., Richmond, Va., for defendant.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

HILTON, District Judge.

This case was tried before the Court, and upon the evidence presented and argument of counsel, the Court makes the following Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.

Findings of Fact

1. This action has been brought under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. 29 U.S.C. § 706(8)(B).

2. Plaintiff, Sofia P. Pandazides is 26 years old, a life long resident of Prince William County, Virginia and a graduate of Longwood College in Virginia. Following Plaintiff's graduation from Longwood College, she was employed as a special education teacher at Woodbridge Middle School in the Prince William County School System for a one-year appointment for the 1988-89 school year.

3. The State Board of Education granted Plaintiff a one-year nonrenewable probationary certificate to teach in Prince William County from September 1988 to September 1989 in 1988. Plaintiff's probationary teaching certificate was subject to the condition that she meet the Board of Education's requirement that she pass the National Teacher Examination ("NTE") during the one-year period for which she was granted leave to teach.

4. In 1978 the Virginia General Assembly expressed concern that the certification of teachers did not include any objective determination of competency other than transcript analysis. Because of this concern, the General Assembly established a study committee to examine the appropriateness of competency examination for teachers as a prerequisite to the issuance of a teacher's certificate. HJR 165, 1978 Acts of Assembly 1988-89.

5. Virginia then enacted a requirement that, on or after July 1, 1980, all prospective teachers seeking initial certification must pass a professional teacher's examination prescribed by the Virginia Board of Education.

6. The State Board of Education prescribed the NTE, administered by the Educational Testing Service ("ETS") of Princeton, New Jersey, as its professional teacher's examination prerequisite.

7. In addition to the licensure requirement that teachers pass the NTE, applicants for licensure are also required to have graduated from a Board approved teacher education program at an accredited college or university and must have passed certain required courses.

8. The NTE is composed of two categories of tests: (1) Core Battery, and (2) Specialty Area Tests.

9. The NTE Core Battery provides a comprehensive assessment of the basic knowledge and skills required for the beginning teacher and consists of three separate tests: Communication Skills, General Knowledge, and Professional Knowledge.

10. The Communication Skills test covers listening, reading, and writing.

11. The General Knowledge test covers mathematics, science, social studies, literature, and fine arts.

12. The Professional Knowledge test covers the knowledge and skills needed for developing plans to meet instructional objectives and their implementation in the classroom, the professional behavior required of a teacher, recognition of students' rights and other aspects of professional behavior.

13. ETS provides a separate score for each test in the Core Battery.

14. The Virginia General Assembly required extensive study prior to establishing passing score levels ("cut scores") for each sub-test in the Core Battery. In 1980 the legislature even required the Board of Education to postpone establishment of cut scores to assure sufficient time for validation study. See HJR 180, 1980 Acts of Assembly at 1537.

15. Dr. Lawrence H. Cross of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University was hired to conduct a study to determine the validity of the Virginia Board of Education's use of the NTE and to recommend proper Core Battery cut scores.

16. Dr. Cross is an Associate Professor of Education Research and Evaluation at Virginia Tech. He received an award for his outstanding research on education from the Virginia Educational Research Association in 1982 and the Dean's Award for Distinguished Research at Virginia Tech in 1983. Dr. Cross has written numerous scholarly articles on testing and education and has done validation research on the NTE in Louisiana and Kansas. He has conducted workshops on testing for school districts in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Dr. Cross conducted a validation study of the Virginia Board of Education's use of the NTE from 1980 to 1983.

17. Dr. Cross's validation study concluded that the skills tested by the NTE Communication Skills Test were strongly endorsed by classroom teachers and by teacher educators as essential functions which were actually needed on a constant basis in the professional teacher's job.

18. The conclusion reached by Dr. Cross in his Virginia validation study that the NTE measured skills necessary for minimally competent performance for certified professional teachers was the same result found in a study of teacher educators and classroom teachers who examined the contents of the Communications Skills Test for ETS in over 15 states.

19. On June 21, 1984, the Virginia Board of Education approved the cut scores for the Core Battery which were recommended by Dr. Cross's validation study. The Virginia Board of Education required that applicants seeking a teacher's license achieve a communication skills test score of 649, a general knowledge test score of 639 and a professional knowledge test score of 639.

20. The Virginia Board of Education placed no limits on the number of times applicants could retake the tests if they failed.

21. Although Plaintiff passed the NTE's general knowledge test on her first attempt and passed the NTE's professional knowledge test on her second attempt, Plaintiff has failed the NTE's communication skills test eight times.

22. The NTE's communications skills test measures the ability of prospective teachers to understand and use elements of written and spoken language.

23. The NTE's communication skills test has four one-half hour sections. They are: listening skills (on tape); reading (multiple choice); writing (multiple choice); and an essay to measure writing skills.

24. The 40 question listening section examines an individual's ability to comprehend, analyze, evaluate and respond to messages. The approximate percentages of questions measuring each listening skill are: comprehension (40%); analysis (25%); evaluation (25%); and feedback response (10%).

25. The 30 question listening section examines an individual's ability to comprehend, analyze, and evaluate reading material. The approximate percentages of questions measuring each reading skill are: comprehension (50%); analysis (35%); evaluation (15%).

26. There are 45 multiple choice questions to evaluate an individual's writing skills. Approximately 60% of the questions measure usage skills, 20% measure sentence correction skills, and 20% measure composition strategies.

27. The final section measures an individual's writing skills with an essay about one specified topic.

28. The NTE's communication skills test is an objective standardized examination designed to have no interaction between an examinee and an exam administrator. The communication skills test was designed to be non-interactive in order to avoid the possibility that the examinee's answers could be cued or shaped by a person administering or interpreting the examination and to present the same challenges to all examinees independent of the qualifications of the administrator.

29. After having failed the NTE communications skills test in June 1987, October 1987, March 1988, June 1988, September 1988, and October 1988, Plaintiff wrote to the Virginia Department of Education asking that she be exempted from the licensure requirement of passing the NTE communications skills section on January 25, 1989. This letter made no mention of any learning disabilities.

30. In a letter dated February 10, 1989, Plaintiff again wrote the Virginia Department of Education in which she stated her belief that "a subtle learning disability prevents me from passing this one part of the NTE." Plaintiff enclosed two letters to support this assertion.

31. Plaintiff's physician, Dr. Rodolpho L. Lopez, stated in a one sentence letter: "It is my opinion that Sophia Pandazides suffers from test anxiety and should be granted exemption from the Communication Skills portion of the National Teacher Examination."

32. A letter from Dr. Vera Williams, Acting Dean of Longwood College's School of Education and Human Services, attributed Plaintiff's repeated failure to pass the NTE's communications skills test to Plaintiff's test anxiety and her "inability to organize her thoughts and time."

33. The letter from Dr. Williams said that she suspected that Miss Pandazides "might" have a learning disability because of Plaintiff's "difficulty in test taking: test anxiety; and difficulty with organizing knowledge and thoughts." Dr. Williams stated that a few years earlier when Plaintiff was one of her students she suggested to Miss Pandazides that she be tested for learning disabilities. Plaintiff did not accept Dr. Williams' offer and Dr. Williams "did not persist in the idea of having her tested so long as she was performing adequately."

34. The Virginia Department of Education denied Plaintiff's request that the Department waive the Commonwealth's requirement that teachers pass the NTE communication test.

35. Plaintiff wrote to ETS in a letter dated March 17, 1989 seeking two special arrangements for taking the Communication Skills Test: "A reader and unlimited response time." In support of this...