By Rosemary Shinohara
Anchorage Daily News (Published May 15, 2001)
If it appears your child's California Achievement Test scores that just arrived in the mail took a sudden dive, don't worry. It's a computer error. Late last week, the Anchorage School District sent out wrong scores to the 7,500 fourth- and seventh-grade students who took the standardized tests in February. The composites, or averages for reading, math and language arts combined, were right, said Ray Fenton, assessment director. But a programming error caused district computers to print only one digit on scores for individual subjects. So if a student scored at the 75th percentile in reading, the report indicated a score at the 7th or 5th percentile. In some cases, no score printed for individual subjects, Fenton said. All student reports probably contained the mistakes, he said. It was not a nice Mother's Day present for many parents who got the results Saturday and had to wait until Monday to find out whether their kids were really failing. The CAT tests compare individual students with a national group for which the 50th percentile is average. A score at the 5th percentile would be near the bottom of the scale. The district will reprint the reports and mail them this week, Fenton said. The mistake cost the district about $3,500. Only two grades took the CAT tests because the district cut other grades to save money and to avoid overtesting students. The state now gives its benchmark exams to third-, sixth- and eighth-graders. The state also gives exit test to high school students. Districts around Alaska should receive this year's state test results this week and will then distribute them to parents. The Anchorage School District expects to send the state results to parents in late May, Fenton said. http://www.adn.com/metro/story/0,2633,266660,00.html

-- Anonymous, May 16, 2001