Minnesota Company Admits Math Scores Don't Add Up

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Saturday July 29 3:33 PM ET

Company Admits Minnesota Math Scores Don't Add Up

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - A private testing company has promised to make amends for mistakenly flunking nearly 8,000 Minnesota high school students who took the state's basic math skills test this year, a newspaper reported Saturday.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune said the affected students included 336 seniors who may have been barred from graduating because of their scores.

Minnesota requires its seniors to pass basic skills exams in reading, writing and mathematics before they can graduate. The state pays $2.9 million a year to have National Computer Systems (NCS), based in the Twin Cities suburb of Eden Prairie, administer and grade the tests.

But David Smith, president of NCS' Assessment and Testing Services division, said an employee erred by changing the order of the questions on one form of the math test without changing the order of the corresponding answers.

``We messed up,'' Smith said at a news conference on Friday, adding that the mistake was an anomaly.

The company operates tests in all 50 states and oversees testing programs in 18 states, the newspaper said.

Smith said NCS will meet state officials' demands to send letters of apology and corrected math reports to all students who took the tests. NCS will also submit to an independent audit of its practices and offer $1,000 in college tuition for anyone who was denied a diploma because of the errors.

A special graduation ceremony was being planned for students who were not allowed to receive diplomas in their districts because of the grading mistakes.

The Star-Tribune said NCS improperly scored 45,739 mathematics tests taken in February and 1,358 tests taken in April. As a result of the errors, 7,989 students were incorrectly told they failed the exams.

Smith said the scoring errors did not result in any passing grades for students who should have failed.

(end of article)

Note: I find it very hard to believe that this one was an employee error!

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), July 30, 2000


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