Typo by Testing Company Has Some Parents Outraged
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The publisher of the state’s English Language Arts test, CTB McGraw-Hill, has sent out a new batch of test results to parents this week after discovering a typographical error on the originals, but not before some had already received the flawed versions.
The typo was on the first page of the test reports, which give parents the individual results for their children, according to an e-mail that was sent out to an estimated 300 city principals last week. In the bottom portion of the page describing the performance levels measured in the reading test, the report incorrectly referred to “mathematics content” instead of to English Language Arts knowledge and skills. The e-mail asked principals to stop distributing the reports, “as they may confuse parents.”
The e-mail didn’t reach some of the 300 principals in time. As many as seven principals had already sent out the original versions, according to the city Department of Education. Parents who received the flawed reports will receive an apology letter, along with new versions. The actual test results were not affected by the mistake.
The typo was found on less than a quarter of the reports sent to city schools, a CBT McGraw-Hill spokeswoman, Kelley Carpenter, said.
“We immediately contacted the affected schools, corrected the typo, printed and paid for replacement reports, and provided them to the schools by October 31st,” she said in an emailed statement, referring to the deadline for returning the results. She added that the typo was minor.
Some parents didn’t see it that way, including one of the founders of BrownieTheCow.org, Joe Morris, who helped start the Web site for parents who want the state to discard the fourth-grade reading test results because they say some questions were confusing.
“Hearing about this typo compounds our sense that CTB McGraw-Hill didn’t work as hard on this test as our kids and their teachers did,” Mr. Morris said.
The founder of Time Out From Testing, Jane Hirschman, who advocates against high-stakes standardized tests, said CTB McGraw-Hill’s being given an opportunity to correct its mistake was hypocritical.
“They get to say oops I made a mistake, don’t hold me accountable,” she said. “When children have one hour to take a test and they make a mistake, they’re held really accountable.”
