The state education department told school districts Monday that it found a small error on some forms of the basic skills reading test that all Minnesota eighth-graders will take today. Given past problems with the state testing program, some lawmakers say even a small error is cause for concern.

In an ``urgent'' memo to school and district testing officials, the Children, Families & Learning Department said the multiple-choice responses on one question on the reading test are mislabeled ``E, F, G, G'' when they should be labeled ``E, F, G, H.'' The memo instructs districts on testing day to determine which students have the faulty form and to correct it.

The mistake involves a question the education department is only field-testing for possible use in future exams. It won't count toward a student's score this year. Still, it's a repeat of a similar problem with a field-tested question last year -- an error that wasn't caught until students had begun taking the test, the department acknowledged Monday.

This most recent oversight may cause some confusion as kids take the test today. It's also unlikely to improve the image of a statewide testing system still recovering from a massive error last year that resulted in 47,000 basic skills math tests being incorrectly scored and nearly 8,000 students being told, wrongly, that they'd failed the test.

State lawmakers Monday reacted unhappily after learning about the newest, albeit small, error.

``I'm gravely concerned,'' said Rep. Harry Mares, the chairman of the House Education Policy Committee. ``You'd think this would have been checked, rechecked and triple-checked. It should not have happened.''

Rep. Alice Seagren, R-Bloomington, said she had talked with education department officials earlier this year to make sure proper safeguards were in place. She said the House leaders may now want to conduct hearings on the testing issue, including examining the state's contract with its test provider, NCS Pearson. The education department has a one-year contract extension with the company through June.

``It's a pretty basic thing that should have been caught before it was mailed out,'' said Seagren, the chairwoman of the K-12 Education Finance Committee. ``It makes the public feel nervous.''

Rep. Matt Entenza, a DFL critic of some aspects of the state's testing system, said Monday's announcement shows that the education department and NCS Pearson have not done enough to beef up quality control of the statewide tests.

``Confidence is pretty low, and it's hard to go below rock bottom, but they are trying,'' said the St. Paul lawmaker. ``It's pretty disappointing to hear it's happening again.''

Students are required to pass basic skills exams in math, writing and reading by their senior year to graduate on time. The high-stakes nature of the exams magnifies the importance of even small mistakes.

Because of last year's scoring error, the education department delayed the launch of a series of new tests and spent the past few months adding staff to its testing section and putting new safeguards in place. Some of that oversight was planned prior to last year's test mistake.

``The good news is the system worked'' this time and caught the mislabeled test question before students took the test today, education department spokeswoman Rachel Tschida said Monday. A department employee who was taking the exam as part of the review process caught it, she said.

In the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district, administrators were deciding Monday how they'd fix the labeling of the responses as students open the test, said Tony Taschner, a district spokesman.

``One school said they're going to do it over the intercom. At another, they'll put an overhead up and say `Here's what the change is,' '' Taschner said. Teachers won't be making the change manually before the students arrive for the test.

``The problem you would run into is if you broke the seal on the test and the kid wasn't there that day,'' he said. That would likely complicate the makeup test the student would need to take.

Besides the error in this year's basic skills reading test, a similar mistake last year, and the major error scoring the 2000 exam, NCS Pearson last year mistakenly printed the wrong state average scores on the transcripts of 61,000 fifth-graders who took the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment writing exam.

Pioneer Planet

-- Anonymous, February 08, 2001

Answers

Lawsuit over 2000 test-score error to be a class action

The four lawsuits filed against National Computer Systems following last year's scoring error on the state's basic-skills math test have been combined and certified as a single class-action suit.

While gaining class-action status does not guarantee that the students and families will win the suit against NCS Pearson, it's an important step in what may prove to be a precedent-setting case.

The ruling, issued by Hennepin County District Judge Allen Oleisky last week, defines the class as "All students who were incorrectly told they failed the math portion of the Minnesota Basic Standards Test administered in February or April 2000 and the parents and/or guardians of such students."

Shawn Raiter, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys, said consolidation of the cases offers the most efficient way to deal with the concerns of the 8,000 students affected by the scoring error.

"In a case like this, some of the claims would be very difficult to pursue individually against a company as large as NCS Pearson," he said. "So it really helps the little guy get his day in court."

NCS Pearson was quick to acknowledge its mistakes last summer after a parent reviewing the test identified problems in how his daughter's test was scored. While the company set up a system to reimburse families for out-of-pocket expenses, it balked at the idea that it should compensate families for emotional distress caused by the scoring error.

NCS Pearson fought the class-action move because different students were affected in different ways. At one extreme were the seniors who were told they couldn't graduate with their classmates, while at the other end were underclassmen who had to enroll in remedial courses.

NCS Pearson attorney Lindsay Arthur said the lawsuits were unnecessary because his client already has invested a lot of time and money in locating and compensating families.

To date, NCS Pearson has made payments to more than 50 families, according to Arthur.

Raiter, whose law firm is one of four representing students and families, said he and the other plaintiffs' attorneys intend to show that the testing company knew about the quality-control problems before its scoring error came to light and that it didn't act to close up holes in its system.

"Minnesota's a perfect example of a system that was designed to be high-stakes, and despite that, any number of quality-control checks were not done or were not in place," Raiter said. "The people of Minnesota should expect NCS to be more responsible than it has been."

NCS Pearson did not ask families to sign waivers in exchange for payments they received, so even families who were reimbursed for out-of-pocket expenses are still eligible to seek additional compensation under the class action.

http://www.startribune.com/viewers/qview/cgi/qview.cgi?template=metro_ a_cache&slug=ncs05

-- Anonymous, June 05, 2001