by Jennifer Marino
The problems surrounding the troubled Math A Regents continue. The New York State Education Department will not be issuing a conversion chart for the scores until 10 days after the test. The state establishes a passing score and prorates all test results accordingly.
This means that after students take the Math A Regents later this month, the high school staff will not immediately be able to estimate who has passed and who has failed. This will have a domino effect, preventing the school from putting together students- schedules for the next semester.
The test will be given on Jan. 26, but 10 days later, when the scoring conversion is available, the students will be nearly a week into the second semester. Superintendent Dr. William Johnson called the development a disastrous decision.
He is still hoping that the state will change its mind. The school district is asking that the state give it an estimated passing score so that it can have some idea of who has passed the exam. District officials would like that score to be on the high side, so they can deliver only good news that someone on the cusp passed instead of failed once the actual conversion is made.
I-m still hopeful that this issue will gather steam, the superintendent said.
According to Johnson, the state has told school districts that they should try to make their own estimations. The state is delaying the release of the conversion chart so it can analyze the raw scores and compare them with the results of the June 2001 exam. This is an attempt to make sure there is not a large percentage of failures, as there were after the June 2002 test.
