Results of statewide math exams administered in May to public school pupils in grades 4 and 8 won’t be sent to districts until the week of August 16, according to a spokesman for the state Department of Education, Jonathan Burman. Why it’s taking the state almost four months to grade the exams is one question. But the state’s sluggishness also means that parents will have little time to decide how to respond to their children’s results before the start of the school year.

The test scores help calculate whether a school has made “adequate yearly progress” under the No Child Left Behind Act, under which states designate as “needing improvement” schools whose students failed to meet statewide standards for two consecutive years. Students who attend the failing schools are eligible for support services such as tutoring or transfers to better schools. Almost 500 schools in New York City — 40% of all public schools — were on the list of failing schools last year, and more than 7,000 pupils transferred to other schools in 2003.

Because the state is taking its fine time with the exams, the list of failing schools can’t be compiled until late August. Mr. Burman told us that designating schools as “needing improvement” requires extensive verification of various data, so it’s always a time-consuming process. It’s true, as Mr. Burman emphasized, that the No Child Left Behind Act requires only that the list be available before school actually begins. Cold comfort for parents who want to know where to send their children in September. The timing of the list’s release means that parents may have to scramble to transfer their children before they miss too much of the school year.

Council Member Eva Moskowitz told us that a possible rush to transfer under NCLB is not the only problem with the August release of the test results. “As a parent, I want to know if my kids are not doing well.I want to know if I should get a tutor or pull my kid out of school,” Ms. Moskowitz said. “It’s like a report card. It needs to be received before you end school.” By the time the new school year starts, gaining admission to a private or charter school may no longer be an option.

Last year, Ms. Moskowitz said, pupils who took the math exams did not receive their results until the middle of the following fall. Mr. Burman has said that, beginning in the 2005-2006 school year, the math exams will be administered earlier so that the results are available before the end of the year.

This fails to explain why it takes state bureaucrats so long to give parents their children’s results. High school students, for example, can get their SAT scores two weeks after the exam. Grade the state Education Department as “needing improvement.”