The schools chancellor, Joel Klein, is being buried alive on the testing issue, a matter he and I agree on.

In a wire to principals Wednesday, April 28, 2004,
[The message below was sent to all principals today from the Chancellor:
Dear Colleagues,
As you probably know, virtually all of our third grade students attended school the day of the English language arts test last week. And nearly 100% attended for today's citywide math test. The ELA test received plenty of media coverage; however, much of it was based on or in response to serious misinformation generated by those who oppose the test and what they label "high stakes testing."
In my opinion, our third graders were treated badly by the anti-test "activists" who obtained and shared the test with the media or spread misinformation about it, and also by those who used the 2003 test to prepare students for this year's test, whatever their motives.

The public deserves accurate information in the important debate about our education policies. And our children deserve a test-taking environment free from self-serving or inflammatory rhetoric.

So let me take a minute to address the misinformation.

First, the citywide ELA test is a valid, reliable assessment of our third grade students' knowledge and skills. It does NOT, as some claim, include questions that are racially biased. It does NOT include items which "favor" specific groups. It is NOT designed to fail some children at the bottom of a scoring curve. And the repetition of some questions from the prior year does NOT in any way invalidate its reliability as a measure of student preparedness for advanced work at the next grade level. On the contrary, this practice helps ensure that our tests are consistently reliable.

With the great turn-out on test day last Tuesday, and during the first day of make-up testing on Wednesday, nearly all of our third-graders took the test before copies were distributed to the media by irresponsible individuals. Therefore, for most of the children, the test was not compromised.

We will give another form of the ELA test to students who could not take it in make-up because of its distribution to the media by a group called "Time Out From Testing". We will give parents of the few students who may have unwittingly practiced on passages from the test the option to take a new test or to have their original test scored without the carry-over items.

We will begin contacting the parents of affected students early next week to ask them to select the option they prefer. The ELA retest for those who need it will be held Wednesday, May 12.

An investigation of how the test was obtained by "Time Out From Testing" is underway. We await the conclusion of the investigation to determine what actions might be appropriate.

We are looking into a few reports that copies of last year's citywide ELA were not returned last year, and were instead used for practice this year. If you are aware of any other instances like this, please let us know. If true, this obviously was done contrary to our long-established and frequently communicated test procedures. If the investigation shows that school staff knowingly violated DOE test procedures, appropriate disciplinary action will be taken.

Our primary focus must remain on the children. We are committed to continued progress on the reforms necessary to put the Children First in our public school system. As our experience with this test confirms, reform will be resisted by some who would preserve the status quo, ineffective as it might have been for vast numbers of our students. I will rely on each and every one of you not to allow such incidents to distract you from the genuine progress we are making with your help and that of teachers, coaches, parents and parent coordinators.

Keep up the great work.
Sincerely,

Joel I Klein]

now widely distributed on the Internet by friend and foe alike, Mr. Klein correctly suggested that "our third graders were treated badly by the anti-test 'activists' who obtained and shared the test with the media or spread misinformation about it."

The chancellor is absolutely right.Objective testing is the only way we can evaluate the progress of individual students and, by extension,their teachers,their schools,and even Mr. Klein himself.

Back in October, when testifying before the Assembly and Senate education committees in Albany, Mr. Klein paraphrased a column of mine written three weeks before.

What I said back then is just as true today. "Winston Churchill once observed, 'Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.' Similarly, the use of objective testing devices is the worst form of student assessment - except for all the other devices."

Mr. Klein also agreed with my advocacy of "value-added testing," which measures gains in performance of individual children from year-to-year, a more useful yardstick than comparing this year's fourth grade with last year's.

Accelerating a switchover to this form of assessment would be the best way that a business model could be applied to education. Mr. Klein should be applauded for embracing it.

Clearly, the chancellor is annoyed that those who oppose testing seem to sing the sirens' song when it comes to luring the press.

Just as Mayor Bloomberg promised us "back-to-basics," but actually gave us a "progressive" pedagogy, Mr. Klein grumbles about the anti-testing crowd, although he has empowered them at every level in his department.

Advocates of whole language, constructivist math and bilingual education, the programs at the center of the approach put in place by Mr. Klein's departed deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Diana Lam, generally oppose "high-stakes" tests.

That is because the results of that testing reflects badly on their programs. The mere mention of "scientifically validated" programs elicits howls of protest from them.

The anti-testing fervor is especially prevalent in the small high school movement that is at the center of Mr. Klein's strategy for saving the high schools. These folks are no fools.

They understand that the greatest enemy to their philosophy is forcing these schools to conform to the same standards as the conventional schools.

Mr. Klein was justifiably proud of the high attendance rate on the days the tests were administered. This came in the face of efforts by a group based in the Bronx, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, which urged parents to keep their children home.

Is Mr. Klein aware that the president of the group that he may have seen leading the protests on television, Ronn Jordan, was until recently working as a community organizer for a Department of Education contractor, LINC Inc.?

This firm hired Mr. Jordan to coordinate the "organizing" of parents to "support literacy" on behalf of the old District 10, which is now part of Region 1, the same neighborhoods in which his organization, an Acorn affiliate, is active.

In his wire to principals, Mr. Klein complained about the group Time Out From Testing. He wondered how they got copies of last week's tests, and demands an investigation

Doesn't he realize that the group's co-chairwoman, Ann Cook, is also the director of the Urban Academy High School, a Department of Education public school situated in the old Julia Richman High School on the Upper East Side?

If Mr. Klein wants to learn about his opponents, he could check out the school's Web site, which includes a long diatribe against testing at www.urbanacademy.org/learn/urbanstand.html.

If that is too much typing, there is a link on his own Department of Education Web site.

Maybe even more convenient would be for Mr. Klein to dash over to the desk of one of acting Deputy Chancellor Carmen Fariña's top aides, Eric Nadelstern. He runs the office of School Improvement, a position just one step below that of the deputy chancellor.

In his career in the Department of Education, Mr. Nadelstern has been a frequent, vocal spokesperson for those opposed to testing.

He was the principal of the International School in Queens, which he led out of the old Board of Education to become a charter school in the hope that this would relieve his students of the "burden" of having to take Regents exams.

The Christian Science Monitor in February 2000 reported that Mr. Nadelstern felt that having to prepare for Regents exams would "interfere" with the school's curriculum.

State Education Commissioner Richard Mills felt differently and ordered him to administer the exams or the school would be closed, an action that led to a group of these schools, including Mr. Nadelstern's, taking Mr. Mills to court, unsuccessfully, as it turned out.

As a result, Mr. Nadelstern seemed to lose his enthusiasm for the charter movement and led his school back into the Board of Education and their more tolerant approach to his anti-testing philosophy.

In a letter to the New York Times, Mr. Nadelstern wrote, "Replacing the joy of learning with test anxiety simply hastens the premature end of childhood." I disagree.

The joy of learning and the challenge of testing need not be mutually exclusive. The role of the school is to provide the transition from the innocence of childhood to the responsibilities of adulthood.

Mr. Klein seems to understand this, and I am not trying to undermine him but help him when I point out that he has inadvertently nurtured philosophies and personnel diametrically opposed to these core beliefs.

I hope the testing episode will make the chancellor a tougher and wiser man.

Andrew Wolf
Editor and Publisher, The Riverdale Review, Bronx Press Newsgroup

However, in New York City, Principals have deliberately sabotaged the testing process for years by taking the brightest children out of the testing room and giving them as much time as they wanted in order to finish the test with all correct answers. Also, "special education" accommodations are handed out randomly so that kids get extra time to finish:


NEW YORK POST
SCHOOLMASTER MIKE: I'LL BEAT THE 'CHEATS'

By CARL CAMPANILE and STEFAN C. FRIEDMAN

April 17, 2004 -- Mayor Bloomberg went on the educational warpath yesterday - warning schools they'd better not cheat on Tuesday's high-stakes third-grade reading exam and blasting a judge for ordering the city to restore costly sabbaticals for teachers.
The mayor was responding to a story in yesterday's Post, reporting parent accusations that their Upper East Side school was attempting to label their kids as "learning disabled" to get them more time to complete the test - and boost test scores. But the students, the parents insisted, are not disabled.

"It is unconscionable. We're not going to tolerate it," Bloomberg said.

During his weekly radio show, the mayor addressed the scandal at PS 290 and cheating in general.

"We're not going to let people game the system and get a special advantage that they don't deserve. Children who are blessed with normal abilities are going to have to learn to compete at the normal level."

But Bloomberg also said students with actual "special needs" will get more time to take exams. "We're going to help those kids. We're not walking away from them at all," he said.

Meanwhile, the mayor railed against teacher sabbaticals and the state arbitrator who ruled on Thursday that the city violated the union contract by denying 600 teachers their cherished leave last year.

"Some of these arbitrators don't understand the real cost of these sabbaticals," Bloomberg said. "The real big costs is there are senior teachers who should be here in the classroom."

Teachers get paid 70 percent of their full salary - plus benefits - to go on yearlong sabbatical studies to take refresher courses at local colleges. And they get 60 percent of their salary for six-month sabbaticals.

It costs the city up to $70 million to operate the program.

The decision said city officials have to negotiate with the teachers union to reduce or eliminate leave time for teachers, and ordered the costly perk restored.

The mayor complained the program has been abused, with teachers taking cushy courses unrelated to their teaching duties. He cited a teacher taking a year off to study real-estate law to become a broker.

"It is intolerable," he said. "It's a disgrace."

"And taking a year off to get a course that's interesting for them, but doesn't help the kids of New York, is not something that ever should have been put in the union contract," Bloomberg said.

Teachers union president Randi Weingarten insisted all sabbaticals have to be approved as relevant by superintendents, or they're not granted.

"If he is so worried about retaining good teachers, why doesn't he quit stalling at the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith with us for a contract with better working conditions and competitive salaries to make the teaching profession more attractive?" Weingarten said.

At some schools, test prep included giving the children some of the questions that appeared on this year's test:

Parents demand test retakes
New York Newsday
Apr 21, 2004

BY WIL CRUZ
Staff Writer

April 21, 2004, 7:28 PM EDT


Just when city third-graders thought they were through with this year's English exam, some advocates are demanding that students in at least four schools retake the test because they studied questions from last year's exams that also appeared on this year's version.

The Department of Education acknowledged that a dozen questions and three reading passages from last year's test were in Tuesday's exam. Spokeswoman Eileen Murphy, however, said it was common for standardized exams to have some repeat questions.

But teachers should not have used last year's exams for preparation, she said.

Murphy said the practice of violates department rules.

"It's very clearly outlined in procedures," Murphy said.

Though no offenders had been identified, Murphy said a person who "willfully" ignored the procedures could face disciplinary action.

At City Hall, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city was investigating the cheating allegations. If the reports are validated, third-graders in those schools will take what Murphy described as a "breach" test, or a backup.

"If it happened we'll retest it," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg at City Hall. "The issue is to find out who needs more help."

A makeup date has not been set, she said.

The citywide tests - the mathematics exam is next week - are the linchpin to the city's plan to do away with systematically promoting ill-prepared students. Third-graders who score a so-called Level 1 on either test could be retained, pending an appeals process, a summer school program and second opportunity to take the failed exam.

Meanwhile, City Council members Margarita Lopez and Charles Barron and an advocacy group leader Wednesday held a news conference outside of Tweed Courthouse, saying the city should see the alleged confusion as a sign that its retention policy is flawed. They called for Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein to rescind the controversial plan.

"We don't want the tests to be rewritten," said Jane Hirschmann, of Time Out From Testing. "This test is invalid; the next test will be just as invalid."

Also at the press conference was Jane Andrias, a educator of about 35 years who recently retired as principal at Central Park East. She said she and other teachers had tests from last year and used them to help children prepare for standardized tests.

The city never said she was required to return the tests, Andrias said.

Klein accused the advocacy groups of being out of touch.

"These are such a tiny group of critics who really don't know what they're talking about," he said at Tweed Wednesday night.

Staff writer Glenn Thrush contributed to this story.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
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Third-graders add to laurels
NY Daily News April 28, 2004
By ELIZABETH HAYS, NICOLE BODE and KATHLEEN LUCADAMO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS

Third-graders were breathing a little easier yesterday after finishing make-or-break math exams, but some said they won't celebrate until the results are in.
Scores of 8- and 9-year-olds said they felt calmer after completing the exam, the second of two tests they have to pass to win promotion to fourth grade under a tough new retention policy.

Kassandra Moreno, 9, a student at Public School 307 in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, said she planned to relax after weeks of hard work by going to Coney Island this weekend.

"I feel better that it's over," Kassandra said.

But Cecilia Alcide, whose son Dwayne Tripp attends PS 307, said they will put off celebrating until the scores come out in June. "We won't do anything special until we find out how he did," Alcide said.

Students who studied by using old exams may have recognized seven of the 45 questions, according to the Education Department. But there were no early reports that any third-graders got an inadvertent preview of the math exam, officials said.

The Education Department is still investigating charges that thousands of students had a leg up on the April 20 reading exam because they studied 12 of the questions on old tests. Drilling with old tests is forbidden, but security had been lax on what used to be a low-stakes test.

Third-grade teacher Dawn Renta of PS 149 in Middle Village, Queens, said there were new, more rigid sign-out procedures after the test, which she said was a cinch for most of her kids.

About 98% of third-graders turned out for the math exam, about 1% more than last year, when the tests did not determine whether kids would move on to fourth grade, the department said.

Chancellor Joel Klein defended the exams and thanked kids for sweating them out.

"The tests are a sensible, reliable and critical step in our process of evaluating our students' skills," Klein said.

With Joe Williams
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New York Times
April 29, 2004
Retest Is Option for 3rd Graders Who Got Peek
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

About 1,300 New York City third graders got an improper sneak peek at 15 questions on last week's citywide reading test and must now choose whether to retake a different version of the test or have their scores adjusted to exclude the questions they saw ahead of time, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein said yesterday.

"The families will be given that choice," Mr. Klein said at a news conference at Junior High School 113 in Brooklyn. "So none of them will have to retake the test. If the family wants the student to retake it, they will be able to."

An additional 500 students who were absent for the reading test on April 20 will be given a special makeup exam on May 12, Mr. Klein said. City education officials postponed makeup exams for these students last week after several television stations broadcast close-up images of some test questions.

There has been intense focus on the third grade citywide tests this year because of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's tough new promotion rules, which call for any student scoring in the lowest of four rankings on either test to face the prospect of repeating third grade. The students who saw the questions in advance had been given last year's third-grade reading test for practice. Three reading passages and 15 questions from last year's exam were repeated on this year's test.

Similarly, seven questions from last year's citywide math test were repeated on this year's test, which was given on Tuesday. Education officials said they were investigating a "credible report" that students at one school had seen those math questions in advance.

Officials said it was standard procedure to repeat certain questions, so-called "anchor items," as a way of aiding year-to-year comparisons. Education Department rules call for all exam booklets to be collected and returned for security purposes.

Mr. Klein said officials were still investigating whether there had been any wrongdoing by school employees in the distribution of last year's test for practice.

"In order to have consistent reliable tests, all of our psychometricians and the testing experts believe that having anchor questions helps in that regard," Mr. Klein said. "Occasionally, people don't get the rules. They should get the rules.''

He added that he was sorry that the failure of some adults to follow the rules was "causing children to have to go through what they had to go through." Officials said that the 1,300 students involved were at 13 of the city's 700 elementary schools, but they declined to name the schools.

Critics of the new promotion policy said that it was inappropriate to base promotion on a single test. City officials have countered that any student proposed to be held back would receive an extensive review and that teachers could still promote a child based on class work and other factors. In addition, students who go to summer school and score high enough when they retake the test well can avoid repeating the third grade.

Normally, there are 45 questions on the reading test, and students need to answer about half of them correctly to achieve Level 2, which would guarantee promotion.

Officials said that eliminating the 15 repeated questions, or a third of the test, still allowed them to get a solid statistical measure of student performance. But they said that the test publisher, Harcourt Assessment, had not yet determined how many questions out of 30 a student would need to answer correctly to achieve Level 2.

The chancellor appeared in Brooklyn yesterday with Michael Dell, the chief executive of Dell Inc., who announced that a computer-training program sponsored by the company would be offered to more than 350 middle school students at 24 schools citywide.

After the training course, called TechKnow, each student gets to keep a Dell desktop computer. More than 2,000 children nationwide have participated in the program since July 2001, company officials said.

Last year, the Department of Education awarded Dell a contract to install and maintain all computer hardware, software and other systems in the city's 1,200 schools that is worth about $85 million a year, or potentially a total of $600 million over seven years.

Dell officials said that the expansion of TechKnow to New York City was a natural outgrowth of its business relationship with the Education Department.

Officials said that Dell won the contract over nine other bidders and that the contract had helped consolidate the school system's technology operations. Before the contract, which began in October 2003, 700 different vendors had been approved to provide the same services, officials said.

But Councilwoman Eva S. Moskowitz, the chairwoman of the City Council Education Committee, questioned whether a single-source contract for computing services was the best way to meet the school system's needs.

Ms. Moskowitz, who held a hearing earlier this month to look into Education Department contracts, said that computers purchased through the contract with Dell cost more than comparable machines from other companies, in part because officials said that maintenance services were included in the price.

But Ms. Moskowitz said that her office found that schools often have to wait up to two weeks for machines to be fixed. "It's hard to find schools that are having their computers maintained," she said.

Ms. Moskowitz praised the Dell TechKnow program, saying, "Charity is always good." But she urged the company and city to make clear that they also have a multimillion-dollar business relationship.

"This is a company that is benefiting to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars from its contract with the city," she said. "They have a direct self-interest in doing a little bit of charity."
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MATH-TEST SCANDAL
By CARL CAMPANILE

WHISTLEBLOWER: Maribel Cordero says PS 123 stockpiled fifth-grade exams like this one.- N.Y. Post: David Rentas

May 4, 2004 -- A Brooklyn elementary school violated testing rules by stockpiling numerous copies of prior years' exams - and then giving the materials to teachers and students to prepare for new exams, a whistleblowing teacher charges.
The alleged breach of security resulted in fifth-graders who took last week's math test getting an advance peek at more than a half-dozen questions that were recycled from prior years' exams, claims PS 123 teacher Maribel Cordero.

She provided The Post with copies of five booklets of math-test questions that she said were exams administered in previous years.

All test papers - including unused or extra copies - are supposed to be collected and sent out of the school after the test is administered. Holding on to the tests violates the rules.

Two of the math-test booklets were labeled "CTB Mathematics." That's CTB-McGraw Hill, the city's testing firm. At the bottom of each page was a warning: "Secure material. Do not reproduce or discuss contents." All the booklets had 50 questions - the same number as on the official exams.

Cordero said she was stunned when she realized how many questions she used for practice sessions showed up on the math exam. "My students said, 'Mrs. Cordero, we already did this,' " she said.

The teacher alleged that Principal Barbara Carroll allowed the old tests to be used for practice. "These tests were in a box in one of closets of a classroom. It's a joke," she said.

Carroll declined comment.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein's office is investigating the alleged testing irregularities at PS 123, a spokeswoman said.

"The test scores are not valid. Parents need to know about this. My school isn't the only one doing this. It's happening all over the city," Cordero said.

For the reading test given on April 20, nearly 4,000 students in grades 3, 5, 5 and 7 got an early look at up to 15 questions that were recycled from last year's test and given out to practice sessions.

Because the test was compromised, these students were given the choice of having their test re-scored by discarding the 15 questions from the results, or taking a makeover exam on May 12.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and then there is,

New York Post, May 1, 2004: District 24, Queens, testing Scandal:

QNS. TEST SCANDAL

By ANGELINA CAPPIELLO and CARL CAMPANILE

May 1, 2004 -- Queens school supervisors allowed a principal to inspect her students' fourth-grade exam results last year - and ordered subordinates to consider raising failing scores to passing, Special Schools Investigator Richard Condon charged yesterday.
Condon's probe of the conflict-of-interest testing scandal also found that officials in District 24 failed to secure the tests after they were administered. Some of the tests were removed from a box and stored elsewhere.

The report said PS 16 principal Audrey Murphy gained access to scored and sealed fourth-grade English Language Arts exams last year, then reviewed more than a dozen that had failing grades and had them rescored.

Murphy "singled out specific test papers for the sole purpose of having them rescored," the report said.

Condon said Murphy only ordered another review of a handful of student tests with failing scores.

Condon said it was a particularly offensive conflict because principals and other supervisors are eligible for bonuses based on test-score results.

"When there are bonuses at stake, there's an appearance of impropriety. When you look at only failing scores, the scores can only go up," he said.

The report also said it was wrong for then-District 24 Superintendent Joseph Quinn and his deputy, Catherine Powis, who oversaw the testing, to give a principal access to the exams.

Department of Education testing director Lori Mei admitted that school officers flunked testing procedures.

"The practice of rescoring only certain papers at the conclusion of the scoring period leaves open to question the integrity of the scoring," she said.

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is expected to take disciplinary action against Murphy and Powis, a spokesman said.
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From the New York Times:
Investigators Say Principal Interfered in Test Grading
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN NY TIMES, May 1, 2004

With a potential $10,000 salary bonus riding on her pupils' scores, a Queens elementary school principal interfered with the grading of last year's statewide reading test, city investigators said yesterday. They said she had demanded that the papers of low-performing fourth graders be re-scored with an eye toward raising their grades.

The investigators said that they had found no concrete evidence that any grade had been changed, but that the principal, Audrey Murphy of Public School 16 in Corona, had conducted an unorthodox review of test papers, with the permission of the superintendent of District 24, Joseph Quinn, who also had a sizable bonus at stake.

Scores rose sharply at P.S. 16 last year, with 54.7 percent of fourth graders reading at grade level, up 21 percentage points from 2002.

As a result of the investigation, the City Department of Education withheld the bonuses and is now contemplating further disciplinary action. Last year was the first in which superintendents received merit bonuses under a plan started by Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, and officials said Mr. Quinn was in line for $25,000.

The incident highlights the concerns of education advocates who contend that tying bonuses to test scores can encourage principals and superintendents to overemphasize test preparation and exam results. Mr. Klein has been a strong advocate of merit bonuses, expanding the city's bonus system for principals to include superintendents.

A report by Richard J. Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for the city schools, criticized Mr. Quinn; his deputy, Catherine Powis; other District 24 officials; and Judith Nathan, a high-ranking lawyer at Education Department headquarters.

"It is clear that Quinn and Powis failed to ensure that District 24 used uniform procedures in scoring," the report concluded. "Murphy's students' tests were reviewed in a manner not consistent with the remainder of the district and city. Moreover, tests that received low scores were re-reviewed with the sole purpose of having the tests re-scored."

Mr. Condon suggested that the state issue guidelines making clear that principals should not demand to review tests or to have grades changed after the tests have been scored. The regular grading procedures include several opportunities to review and double-check scores, he said. "One of the things we found was there was not even a specific state regulation saying that principals can't go in and review the test," he said.

Chancellor Klein's press secretary, Jerry Russo, said officials were still reviewing the matter. "The report addresses misconduct in one particular district, and it is certainly not a systemic problem," Mr. Russo said. "We are taking this matter very seriously, and we will proceed very quickly on personnel actions."

As a result of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's restructuring of the school system, District 24 is now part of Region 4 in Queens, where Mr. Quinn and Ms. Powis are now local superintendents. Telephone messages left for them at their offices yesterday were not answered.

The state fourth-grade reading test was given in February 2003, and across the city there was a widespread increase in scores that far outpaced more modest increases in the rest of the state. The gains were especially notable in some historically low-performing schools and districts. In District 24, 60 percent of students met or exceeded the standards, an increase of 11.2 percentage points from 2002.

Two-thirds of the reading test is made up of multiple-choice questions, which are scored electronically. But the remainder of the test involves listening and reading comprehension questions with short written responses by pupils. Those questions are graded locally before the scores are sent to Albany.

While the investigators said they could not conclusively prove that scores had been changed, one witness, an official test scorer in District 24, testified she had observed a test paper that had a score of 1 changed to a score of 3. The witness, whom the report referred to as Scorer A, said that she had complained to a superior and that the score was changed back the next day.

The report said the lawyer, Ms. Nathan, had improperly offered advice to Ms. Powis, the deputy superintendent, while she was under investigation by Mr. Condon's office. Ms. Nathan declined to comment yesterday.

Tom Dunn, a State Education Department spokesman, said Albany was conducting its own inquiry. "We take this matter very seriously," he said, and added, "There are clear rules for scoring provided in the administrator's manual."

Ms. Murphy, who remains the principal of P.S. 16, declined to comment yesterday. But the principals' union, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, issued a statement suggesting that she was guilty of nothing more than being an aggressive advocate for her pupils.

"Clearly this is a case of the best intentions having unintended consequences," Brian Gibbons, a union spokesman, said. "What we have here is a principal who was concerned that some of her students' tests deserved a second look. According to the report, she requested a review of those tests, and the district leadership initiated a policy that gave her the opportunity to do so."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

and NY Newsday:

Principal removed low-scoring tests, report finds

By Wil Cruz
Staff Writer

April 30, 2004, 6:17 PM EDT

A Queens principal last year unsealed a box containing her students' fourth-grade English exams and removed 15 low-performing tests with the purpose of regrading them, all under the watch of approving school district leaders, according a report released Friday by the special commissioner of investigation.

The report, a 14-page document addressed to Chancellor Joel Klein, said Audrey Murphy, principal at PS 16 in Corona, opened a box last February and removed tests with scores of 0 and 1.

It was unclear whether any of the scores were upgraded, but removing tests that have been sealed is a violation of state rules, the report said.

"I cannot say that any score was changed," said Richard Condon, the special commissioner of investigation. "What my issue is is that there's no way that you should be allowed to do that," he added, referring to the removal of the exams.

Murphy did not return telephone calls. The school is in the former District 24. Joseph Quinn, who was superintendent of District 24, and former Deputy Superintendent Catherine Powis were named in the report and accused of implementing a process that gave Murphy access to the tests.

The report said the superintendents claimed the practice was widely accepted -- Powis was quoted as saying it was an "unwritten rule" -- and that other principals in the district were notified about it.

"What we found out is that no other principal knew about it," Condon said, "other than this principal at PS 16."

A spokesman for the principal's union said, "Clearly this is a case of the best of intentions having unintended consequences. What we have here is a principal who was concerned that some of her students' tests deserved a second look."

The nonbinding report recommended that the Department of Education change procedures to prevent future occurrences. Condon, whose office operates independent of the department, did not advise disciplinary action. Spokesman Paul Rose said the department would investigate the accusations.

"We're in the process of reviewing this matter to determine what disciplinary action will be taken with regard to the involved parties," he said. "This report addresses misconduct in one particular district and certainly is not a systemic problem."
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
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Even the Manhattan Borough President is not happy with the tests:

DOE Failing on New Test
Mishaps are Putting More Stress on Students

Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields issued the following statement today on the second foul-up on the reading tests given to third graders:

"The repeated mishaps involving the third grade promotion tests in New York public schools are stressing out students unnecessarily and creating an issue of fairness for those who have to repeat the test. It is unacceptable that at this stage, after much debate and expense, the Department of Education does not have its act together on this high-stakes test.

"There is absolutely no excuse for the mishaps. Chancellor Klein blaming the test-maker represents a shirking of his responsibility. The buck stops at the Chancellor's office and he should have ensured that the test was administered fairly and flawlessly. Parents, students and taxpayers will not accept a pass-the-buck approach in terms of these high-stakes tests.

"Chancellor Klein should have assured that the standardized test would be fairly and effectively administered before he made promotion decisions dependent on it. His lack of adequate prior planning has cost our 3rd graders dearly.

"The DOE and the Bloomberg administration have repeatedly blamed students for their own failings, instead of investing in these students so they don't fail in the first place. They clearly have failed this first round of testing with snafus and confusion. Unfortunately, as we've seen in the past, it is the children who are paying the price for the failures of those who are supposed to be educating them."
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Will this mess never end?

NY Times, May 13, 2004:
Mishaps Still Plague Citywide Reading Test
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

Put in multiple-choice form, the question for Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein yesterday might have gone like this: Which of the following mishaps occurred on this year's citywide reading test? (A) Some teachers wrongly used last year's test for practice, giving children a peek at questions repeated on this year's exam. (B) Some questions were shown on television, forcing a postponement of makeup exams. (C) The answer sheet for yesterday's makeup test did not match the test booklet, causing widespread confusion, or (D) All of the above.

The correct answer, city education officials said yesterday, was (D).

As teachers across the city opened shrink-wrapped packages of exam booklets to administer the makeup reading test yesterday morning, they discovered that the answer sheets did not match the test. Where some questions offered answer choices of E, F, G and H, the answer sheet showed bubbles for only A, B, C and D.

Despite the problem, officials said the test would count unless further analysis showed that scores were thrown off.

The citywide exams have taken on added importance this year because they are a crucial factor in Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's new promotion policy for third graders. Under the policy, any student scoring at Level 1, the lowest of four rankings, on either the reading or math test faces the possibility of being left back.

In all, 2,400 children, including 1,300 third graders, took the makeup exam yesterday. Of the third graders, about half missed the original test on April 20 because they were sick and half were retaking the test because they had had an improper sneak peek at questions repeated from last year.

The problem with the answer sheets appeared to be a printing error by the test publisher, Harcourt Assessment Inc. But critics of standardized testing, who have been among the most outspoken opponents of the mayor's promotion policy, seized on the problem for a new round of attacks.

"People might want to address this issue today as a quality-control issue," said Jane Hirschmann of the group Time Out From Testing. "But from where we stand, it's not a quality-control issue, it's the icing on the cake, pointing to why no one should use a single score on a test to determine an 8-year-old's future."

In comments directed at Mr. Bloomberg, Ms. Hirschmann said: "I think it's about time that he put a stop to this nonsense and really said that this test is not going to be used for a high-stakes purpose because it is unreliable, invalid and we just can't get it straight."

City Councilwoman Melinda R. Katz, a Queens Democrat, said she had filed suit against the city on behalf of students at Public School 174 who were forced to retake the test because they had seen some questions in advance.

Ms. Katz said that yesterday's test should be invalidated because of the answer sheet problem and that teachers should make promotion decisions on their professional judgment. "Now the children have to decipher the grids as well," she said. "This whole exam has been riddled with so much controversy, maybe we need to start from scratch."

The president of the city teachers' union, Randi Weingarten, urged officials to discard the test results. "The test is tainted, and the retest needs to be invalidated," she said.

Mr. Bloomberg's office declined to comment yesterday, referring questions to the Education Department.

Education officials said schools were instructed to proceed with the exam and either to have students circle the correct answer in the question booklet or to simply use the A, B, C and D bubbles on the answer sheet as if they were labeled E, F, G and H. Schools were permitted to delay the start of the test by half an hour, but students were not given any extra time. There are 50 questions, and students were given 65 minutes to complete them.

Officials said Harcourt would grade the exams regardless of how students filled in the answers. "The students' answers will be recorded into the test publisher's scoring system," the Education Department said in a statement. "Verification will assure that the recorded answers match the students' written responses. Statistical analyses will be performed to ensure that the test results are valid and reliable."

In the statement, Chancellor Klein said that Harcourt had accepted responsibility and added, "On behalf of our students, their parents and teachers, we are extremely disappointed that the test was delivered with such errors."

In its own statement, Harcourt apologized. "This error occurred in our haste to prepare a makeup test that was necessitated by a breach of security," the company said in a reference to test questions being shown on television. "We are sorry for this error.''
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SCRAP MAKEUP TEST: EVA
By CARL CAMPANILE
New York Post
May 14, 2004 -- The City Council's education chief urged Schools Chancellor Joel Klein to toss out the results of Wednesday's makeup reading exam for 2,400 students because they were given conflicting information on the test and answer sheet.
"Clearly, no professional organization should be administering a test that does not match with its answer key," said Council Education Committee Chairwoman Eva Moskowitz (D-Manhattan). "There are no excuses for this."

Moskowitz was referring to the fiasco in which students were told to select from choices "E," "F," "G" or "H" to answer half the 50 questions they read in the test booklet.

But the answer sheets include only "A," "B," "C" or "D" as choices.

The fallout continues today as a group of council members plan to join Moskowitz in demanding that the test results be invalidated.

Department of Education Testing Director Lori Mei said her office and the testing firm, Harcourt Assessment, will analyze the results - but didn't expect a need to invalidate them.

Mei said the results on the makeup exam will be compared to the scores on the original exams given to third-, fifth-, sixth- and seventh-graders on April 20.
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But the promotion in doubt kids will not be accommodated appropriately, as no one will know what to do with them:

May 14, 2004
Manuals Ignite New Conflict in School Promotion Policy
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN [NY TIMES]

The city's Education Department unveiled a 48-page manual for teachers yesterday and a 27-page manual for principals that offer step-by-step instructions for carrying out Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's new promotion policy for third graders.

Education officials said the manuals were intended to bring citywide consistency and transparency to the promotion process, which they said had previously been haphazard and resulted in differing promotion standards at different schools.

But the unions representing principals and teachers criticized the department for issuing the guidelines so late in the school year and said the manuals required added work and imposed impossible deadlines at an extremely busy time.

At a news conference yesterday at Public School 10 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, Carmen Fariña, the acting deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, said uniform promotion standards would ensure equity for students as they moved through the system.

"There weren't uniform standards across the city in terms of promotion," she said. "If you look at statistics in the past you will see that in some schools, even if you look at test scores, the test scores might be lower, and yet everyone was promoted. You might have another school where the test scores were actually higher and more kids were held over."

The mayor's policy identifies any third grader scoring in the lowest of four ranks on the citywide reading or math test as a candidate to be held back. The manuals lay out an automatic appeal process that requires teachers to build and review an extensive portfolio of student work.

Schools will get the test results on June 8. And according to the manuals, schools must send notification by June 11 to students whose portfolios are not strong enough to win an appeal. But education officials acknowledged that students recommended by their teacher and principal for promotion on appeal would not get any notice until June 25, the last day of school, even though a superintendent could reverse the recommendation.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the teachers' union, said education officials were substituting lock-step rules for teachers' judgment.

"What they have done here in every step of implementing the tough retention policy has been to teacher-proof it and to overwhelm teachers with paperwork and bureaucracy," she said. "It's really intended to eliminate any ounce of professionalism and discretion that a teacher would apply in assessing his or her children."

Jill Levy, president of the union representing principals and assistant principals, complained that her members had not been consulted. "Under this administration, social promotion and testing continue to be a colossal mess," she said. "If the chancellor had any respect for the experience of our members, this process would have been developed collaboratively."

The latest scuffle over the promotion policy came as the Bloomberg administration faced criticism on other education issues.

The critics included state lawmakers who announced a bill to cut back the mayor's control over the school system by setting a one-year term for members of the Panel for Educational Policy, who serve at the pleasure of the mayor or the borough president who appointed them.

In March, Mr. Bloomberg abruptly fired two of his appointees to the panel, which is the successor to the Board of Education, because they had planned to vote against his third-grade promotion policy. Their replacements approved the plan.

The lawmakers, Assemblyman James F. Brennan and State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman, also said their bill would give the city comptroller oversight of Education Department contracts to limit the number awarded without competitive bids.

Robert Lawson, a spokesman for the mayor, said the bill was ill conceived. "The Legislature put in place a reform that gave the mayor and chancellor the authority to undo decades of mismanagement and neglect of our public school system," he said. "This would be a step backward to the days of no accountability and no hope."

Separately yesterday, Gifford Miller, the City Council speaker, and Eva S. Moskowitz, the chairwoman of the Council Education Committee, denounced the mayor's $13.1 billion school construction plan and said they would vote it down.

The Council issued a 10-page briefing paper that offered a scathing critique of the mayor's plan and charged that it offered no plan to reduce class sizes swiftly or to increase the availability of prekindergarten programs, which are limited because of a lack of classroom space.

The Council also said the mayor's plan was not specific enough and that one portion, directed at improving failing schools, was so murky that it amounted to a $1.6 billion "slush fund."

"There are certain priorities in early childhood education, class-size reduction, art and music rooms and other curriculum issues that we don't think are properly addressed yet," Mr. Miller said in an interview.

Jerry Russo, press secretary to Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, defended the plan, saying it "is the most ambitious comprehensive plan in the city's history, and directly addresses the long-neglected needs of our children."
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NY Daily News:
On May 19, 2004 United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten filed a brief to support City Councilwoman Melinda Katz (D-Queens) and parents who are suing the city over the tests.