Report cards to be delayed

More than 1.6 million report cards on the progress of South Carolina schools and districts won't be going home with students today because of a major goof by a testing company.

Pearson, which has a state contract to score end-of-course exams, made a mistake in compiling students' scores. That means a chunk of the already-printed report cards could be wrong, and state leaders don't expect to publish accurate ratings until the end of January. It's an unprecedented situation since school report cards began in 2001.

"We're going to do everything we can to make sure it's the last time that a vendor is able to make this mistake" and the state not catch it, said Superintendent of Education Jim Rex. He plans to institute more sophisticated internal quality controls at the state agency.

Elementary school report cards shouldn't be affected by the error; but middle and high schools, as well as districts and the state, will be affected. Officials estimated that it will cost $300,000 to reprint corrected report cards to distribute to parents, but Rex said the state won't bear that expense.

"We're going to insist the vendor incur the cost," he said, and preliminary discussions with the company indicated that would happen. The state plans to encourage schools to recycle incorrect report cards.

Report cards assign an absolute rating and a growth rating to each school and district, ranging from excellent to at-risk, based mostly on students' test scores. They also include information such as student-teacher ratios, absentee rates for students and teachers, and teachers' average salaries.

School district employees were the first to notice a problem, said Teri Siskind, deputy superintendent for the state accountability division. At least four districts, including Horry, Greenville, Lexington 1 and Lexington 5, noticed inconsistencies in the end-of-course exam scores reported during the year and the end-of-course scores compiled by the testing company for state report card ratings. Officials began looking into the discrepancies and found issues with about 10,000 students' physical science scores and a couple of hundred students' algebra scores.

State leaders didn't realize the widespread nature of the errors until Thursday morning, a day before the ratings were scheduled to be released.

End-of-course exams count for 20 percent of a student's final course grade, but Rex said the scores students received last year were correct.

When the state releases report card ratings in January, the new results will include the resolution of appeals made by schools or districts. The appeals process typically doesn't finish until long after report card ratings are reported in November.

State law requires report card ratings to be released by Nov. 15, but the law doesn't specify a penalty for failing to do that.

"I'm sure some people will be concerned, but we'd rather print accurate data then print something that is inaccurate," Siskind said.

This is the last year Pearson will calculate end-of-course exam scores; the state already awarded the contract to another company for reasons unrelated to this mistake.

Reach Diette Courrégé at 937-5546 or dcourrege@postandcourier.com.