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.