Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, January 1, 1995                   TAG: 9501030093
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

COMPUTERIZED GRADUATE TESTS TO BE OFFERED AGAIN

The Princeton-based ETS also sued Stanley H. Kaplan Education Centers Ltd., which prepares students to take the test, for the way it conducted an investigation that showed the exam could be compromised.

ETS suspended the computerized version of the test Dec. 15 after Kaplan officials confronted the company with a nearly complete set of questions to the GRE-Computer Adaptive Test of general knowledge. The questions were assembled from the work of about 20 Kaplan employees who posed as students, took the computerized test and memorized the questions.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Maryland, accuses Kaplan of violating the federal electronic communications privacy act and copyright laws, plus breach of contract and fraud. To take the test, the Kaplan employees had to agree to abide by confidentiality provisions and acknowledge copyright warnings, ETS said.

Kaplan, which is owned by The Washington Post Co., long has prepared students to take pencil-and-paper GRE tests, given five times a year for students seeking advanced degrees. The new computerized format, administered by Sylvan Learning Centers, allows students to take the test any time and provides a type of adaptive questioning that, based on a student's performance, can skip some of the earlier, easier questions to harder ones drawn from a central database.

The ETS lawsuit claims Kaplan set out to undermine public confidence in the computerized test because it was hurting Kaplan's primary business. ``Kaplan will be required to make significant capital investment in computer technology to maintain even the perceived usefulness of its product,'' the suit charged.