Raven Snook Vega’s heart raced as she logged into the New York City’s online portal to check the latest test results Wednesday.
With a few keystrokes, her daughter’s scores on the most recent round of state testing in math and English flashed on screen. Snook Vega was relieved to find that her daughter did well — but that quickly gave way to confusion.
The problem: The raw score that her daughter earned wasn’t included in the ranges associated with each performance level, which the state ranks from 1 (the lowest) to 4 (the highest.)
“I thought, ‘Oh that’s so weird,’” said Snook Vega, whose daughter attends Mott Hall II on the Upper West Side.
It turns out the scoring rubric in the city’s online portal hadn’t been updated, adding an extra dose of anxiety to the release of state test results this year. Parents had already waited about a month later than usual to learn how their children performed. State officials said they needed extra time to set scores after shortening the testing window from three days to just two.
But the old scoring rubric was somehow left in the online portal when parents started checking for scores Wednesday morning, when results were finally released.
“I found it surprising that the ranges weren’t posted correctly,” said Kate Pomeroy, the mom of two middle schoolers in Manhattan.
Parents groused on Facebook and Twitter over the mix-up, and the education department quickly noticed the error. It was fixed by 11:30 a.m. — even before the official announcement was made that results were out, according to department spokesman Will Mantell. He didn’t say whether the city or state was responsible for the mistake, or how it happened.
Snook Vega’s daughter is in eighth grade this year, which means her scores could help make or break her chances of getting into a competitive high school. She alerted the education department in a Facebook message, and soon got word from friends that the problem appeared to be fixed.
“I think the only stress was wondering, ‘Well is the score that my kid got really right? Is that going to change too?’” Snook Vega said. “To be fair, I was very impressed that it was fixed, I would say within not even 90 minutes.”