High-Stakes Test Results, Low-Speed Delivery

Rockville

You raise an important point that a major study of parents and the No Child Left Behind law recently discussed. Late results can hurt the entire movement to improve schools. But first, here is how school district spokesman Brian Edwards explained the difficulties of getting so many results back to so many parents in a district with nearly 140,000 students:

"The files we received from the Maryland State Department of Education in June and August contain errors. Students are included with incorrect or missing names, schools, grades or IDs. All of these errors have to be corrected before the information can be sent to parents. In addition, MCPS has a higher mobility rate compared to other districts, which means that we have a greater number of our students who move around. That makes it more difficult to match up students with their scores and to confirm that we have the right information.

"It takes less time to complete all these tasks in smaller districts, but the sheer size of MCPS means that these processes take longer. For MCPS, we have to deal with hundreds of student records that need to be examined and corrected. Some corrections are straightforward and easy to fix, but some, such as students with mismatched student IDs and names, take time to review and correct.

"We understand the parents' desire to get information quickly. We want to get it out quickly as well, but it is more important that we send out the right information.

"At the high school level, High School Assessment scores for algebra, government and biology were released at the end of August and English 2 was released in mid-September. We are now cleaning and checking these files. This information will be communicated to parents as soon as possible. However, it is impossible to distribute HSA scores with report cards as we don't even have that information when the final report cards are mailed out."

The school district has a difficult job, to be sure, but this is an area where faster processing would be very beneficial. The public-interest law network Appleseed recently released a major study that concluded that too many parents don't receive clear and timely information about their children and their schools.

Under No Child Left Behind, if parents don't get the test scores in time, they are less likely to be able to use their transfer or free tutoring rights under the law. And if we are going to spend all this time and money assessing students, it doesn't make sense to make students and parents wait six months for the results.

Please send questions and responses -- along with your name, e-mail or postal address and phone number -- to Extra Credit, The Washington Post, 51 Monroe St., Suite 500, Rockville, Md. 20850. Or e-mailextracredit@washpost.com.