Errors Found in Test Scoring of 2 O.C. Schools

State testing officials acknowledged Wednesday that they botched the results for two Orange County schools where poor scores on new statewide tests were reported this week, further frustrating local education officials.

The schools are Corona del Mar High (7-12) in Newport Beach and Fred Newhart Elementary (K-8) in Mission Viejo. These are the first errors confirmed, but about 15 other schools--none in Orange County--have contacted the California Department of Education to challenge their results.

The company that processed the California Learning Assessment System tests said in a memo to local school officials Wednesday it had “discovered a problem” with the eighth-grade math scores at Corona del Mar and Newhart Elementary, both of which had ranked lowest in Orange County on that segment of the test.

“I feel violated,” said Mac Bernd, superintendent of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, which includes Corona del Mar High. Bernd, who called the testing system “a fiasco,” said a portion of tests at both schools were lost and students were given zeros for that section.

The company promised to produce corrected results within a month, and state officials said they will continue to look for similar problems at other schools. The glitch in the reporting increased skepticism about the testing system, in which only a sampling of the tests were scored in each district. Some educators worry that as a result the scores do not reflect the entire student population, while others are concerned that less obvious errors will go undetected.

When the lowest math scores in the county were scored by Corona del Mar and Newhart, which both traditionally score high on standardized tests, it raised a red flag.

“What about the schools that weren’t as dramatic?” asked Barbara Smith, assistant superintendent of the Capistrano Unified School District, which includes Newhart.

Bernd noted that the errors have also thrown off district and county averages.

“This is a lot bigger than our little situation,” he said. “People take this stuff seriously. We make important decisions based on how kids do on tests. We don’t take these as a joke. It’s absolutely important that the testing be well-executed. That information has to be impeccable. It’d be the same as if a corporation were cooking the books.”

Taken last spring by more than 1 million students statewide and about 69,000 in Orange County, the CLAS tests in reading, writing and math are intended to evaluate how students think as well as whether they can get the correct answer. The math portion of the test included multiple-choice questions involving several computations and a word problem in which students had to show their work with charts, pictures and essays.

The tests were scored on a six-level scale, with results reported as the percentage of students in an individual school or district that scored at each level. Only about half of the tests overall were actually scored.

According to the results released Wednesday, 97% of the eighth graders at both Corona del Mar and Newhart scored at the two lowest levels, showing “little or no mathematical thinking.”

But now state officials admit those results are flawed because those schools’ multiple-choice answer sheets were missing and were all given scores of zero.

Bernd said that a representative from CTB MacMillan/McGraw Hill, the company that processed the testing data for the state, told him Wednesday that state education officials decided to substitute either zeros or the local school district’s average where scores were missing.

CLAS consultant Gerry Shelton, who works for the Department of Education, denied that his office suggested using zeros but said it did decide to substitute the district average when school scores were missing because it was “the best data we had.”

But a computer glitch left those schools with zeros anyway, Shelton said.

“Certainly there were (problems)--this was the first year of a program,” Shelton said. “We tested over a million students, we processed something between eight and 10 million documents, there was a problem in just dealing with the volume. . . . It’s unfortunate that (this) happened.”

An angry Bernd said CTB also told him Wednesday that Corona del Mar’s answer sheets were eventually found but that the scores were never input to replace the zeros.

“It’s a crime,” he said. “You’ve got everybody in the county looking over the scores with a magnifying glass. . . . If you give them information that is incorrect, they can become cynical about the importance of testing. That can be a real hindrance to school improvement.”

Although the news brought a sort of relief to administrators at Corona del Mar and Newhart, it only increased others’ frustration with the new tests.

“I am concerned that the design of the test is so flawed that it will not give us reliable or valid information, ever,” said Capistrano Unified’s Smith. “The state needs to slow this process down, slow the train down, make sure that what you do you do well.

“The unfortunate part of all this is I don’t think parents are going to be able to stand back and say, ‘This is just a benchmark.’ They’re going to compare school to school, and I think it’s very unfair to the schools.”

On Wednesday, though, administrators at Corona del Mar and Newhart were just glad that the original scores are incorrect.

“I’ve got about a dozen phone messages on my desk that aren’t very friendly-sounding. I’m delighted to hear that there may be a problem,” said Corona del Mar Principal Tom Jacobson. “If there is a mistake, I can understand it. . . . There are bound to be a few glitches the first time out of the chute. Unfortunately, we may have been one of the first victims.”