Scores of city fifth-graders spent the weekend wondering if they should be sixth-graders.
Educators admitted Friday they overestimated how many fifth-graders should not be promoted – after basing their estimate on preliminary, rather than actual, statewide exams scores from January.
About 8,900 fifth-graders were told they needed to pass summer school or be left back.
Now that the actual test scores are finally in, the Department of Education has discovered that 339 students didn’t have to go through the ordeal – frustrating parents.
The department is currently trying to figure out which of the students who were left back shouldn’t have been.
A spokesman for Chancellor Joel Klein said parents of kids mistakenly held back can decide whether to leave them in fifth, or bump them to sixth.
“We’re going to be reaching out to schools and parents of the students as soon as we can,” Andrew Jacob said yesterday.
Fifth-graders took a statewide reading and writing test in January, but because the test was new, the state said it would take until September to score. With summer-school enrollment deadlines much earlier, the state released preliminary scores, which the city used to determine who didn’t make the grade.
“It took the state much too long. Other states didn’t take this long – but I think it’s a one-time thing,” said Tim Johnson, chairman of the Chancellors Parent Advisory Council.
UFT President Randi Weingarten also blamed the state. “It should not take seven or eight months to get test scores back,” she said. “No one would have accepted it if schools or teachers were this late grading exams.”
But the DOE’s Jacob insisted, “This is not really a case of anyone dropping the ball.”
The 339 affected students “were very close to the cut line. One way or the other, they benefited from the extra help over the summer,” he said.
Parents and educators are bracing for another estimate error as soon as next month, when scores for the March statewide math exam are released.
GUESS AGAIN
* Week of Jan. 10: Statewide reading and writing test.
* Week of March 14: Statewide math test.
* June 16: Estimated exam results are released; 8,900 fifth-graders are told they should go to summer school.
* July 5: Summer school begins.
* Aug. 31: Summer-school test scores announced; 54 percent of 6,013 fifth-graders pass, 46 percent fail and told to repeat grade.
* Sept. 21: Actual statewide exam scores from January are released; city discovers that 339 students did not fail, never had to go to summer school, and might have been left back in error.
* October: Statewide math scores to be released.