Guilderland botches test scores


Guilderland school officials scoring the state Regents exams botched hundreds of student test scores. The district caught the mistakes after they were discovered by a BOCES unit tasked with double checking the scoring.

The errors were caused by incorrect tallies of multiple choice questions and incorrect conversion of raw scores. Fifteen students would have failed the tests, but the district will not change their scores.

The scores were both higher, and lower, than they would have been if scored correctly.

Categories: General
Scott Waldman

22 Responses

  1. KTT says:

    I’m surprised New York hasn’t switched over to testing on a computer. Many districts in other states now have portable laptop labs in which students can take multiple choice tests. Saves time from teachers having to correct it themselves and you get the results almost instantly.

  2. radamus says:


    I’m not suprised. A number of years ago I had a lot of contact with local k-12 educators and I found they had a shockingly low level of computer literacy and willingness to use available technology. Some of them were out-and-out Luddites. I actually had one scream at me that “computers will never replace a teacher”, even though I was only suggesting that many of their more routine tasks could be done better using computers,the internet, and other available technologies.

    In any case, now that schools, teachers, and other people in the educational establishment are going to be held accountable for test scores it doesn’t seem wise letting them grade the tests themselves.

  3. dutch says:

    The photo accompanying the story shows a Physics exam, yet according to the text, the errors ocurred only on exams for other subjects. The Physics exams were not mis-graded. Not a grave error on TU’s part, but needlessly confusing nonetheless.

  4. Salar says:

    Most colleges don’t care about Regents exams. (Which is why private schools often don’t give them) What they do care about, in terms of academics, are AP courses, SATs and ACTs and class rank. All the Regents exams do is encourage “teaching to the test” rather than offering a more enriched curricula. My guess is that they’re nothing more than a nuisance for the better suburban districts.

    The bigger issue in the Guilderland schools, in terms of college admissions and college merit aid, is the failure to weight class rank based upon the level of courses taken. In Guilderland, a grade in a general education science course is weighted the same as a grade in AP Physics. For example, a student with a GPA of 92 in a lower-level, general education track would have a higher class rank than an AP student with a 91 GPA.

    In fact, Guilderland courses do have assigned weights, but they are not applied when computing a weighted GPA for class rank purposes on college applications. And thus, the class rank that is submitted by the district with college applications is not an accurate measure of a student’s relative academic standing. Clearly it would benefit students that have elected to pursue a more rigorous academic schedule.

    So why doesn’t Guilderland make the little effort needed to calculate and submit weighted class ranks with college applications? Because it’s not politically correct. They don’t want to appear to diminish the achievements of less academically talented students…or academically motivated, for that matter. Just more of the same…the dumbing down of our schools. It’s like field day, where every kid gets a ribbon. And it’s all pretty transparent…and bogus.

  5. How Many Others? says:

    How many other districts is this heppening in?

  6. Bamster says:

    “scored improperly by officials”

    Translation: Officials = teachers who can’t do simple math.

  7. GHSguy says:

    Computer literacy isn’t an issue here. The state sent out an entirely new set of scoring requirements, asking teachers to refer to three or four different documents in order to arrive at a final grade. Each teacher had to sign off on each step of the scoring process, which further slowed down the process.
    While I’m sure the new requirements cause some of the glitches, I’m surprised other schools haven’t had the same issues.

  8. city living says:

    GHSguy– as a THSgal, I can tell you that we also had probs with the new scoring—just a matter of unclear directions and unnecessarily complex logistics from the state, as far as I can tell. Of course the newspaper will blow it up and somehow teachers will be at fault again.

  9. GerryMac says:


    Not entirely true. The only new requirement this year was that all Regents exams had to be scanned and stored by Regional Information Centers throughout the state: (
    Tests were still scored in the same manner, except individual districts could not scan them on their own and therefore had to score multiple choice portions of tests by hand in order to have grades in time for report cards and graduations. My guess is that these teachers goofed on hand graded portion and the district is choosing to blame the mistake on a conversion chart.

  10. radamus says:

    Actually most colleges in NYS actually DO care about Regents exams. Also, the vast majority of private high schools in NYS give regents exams. The only ones that don’t are the most selective and elite private schools. Also, the term “teaching to the test” is a red herring used primarily by teachers who don’t want to be held accountable for poor performance.

    My comment on computer literacy was in response to KTT’S surprise that computers aren’t used more by NYS schools for testing purposes, not Scott’s blog.

  11. KR says:

    Bamster– “officals” means administrators, not teachers. The administrators for each discipline has to oversee these grades and tests. Teachers need Master’s degrees to teach in NYS, so cut the bashing please. It’s ignorant. And as far as having kids take tests on computers or laptops, exactly how would that work? If you have 350 kids taking the English Regents exam you would need 350 working laptops with perfectly charged batteries. The system would need to support all of those laptops, along with the administrator and teacher computers, along with all the special education / conflict student computers. And as for weighted grades, weight grades all you want. Then each college will choose the classes that count for that particular college and reweight the grade according to that school’s standard. I am so very tired of laymen thinking they know better than highly educated, trained professionals. If you don’t like the quality of education in your district, move.

  12. Ann says:

    Why, for the love of all that is good, did they use people to count rather than a computer???? What is this, 1965?

  13. KTT says:

    @KR I worked in a district in another state in which laptop labs were used for the entire county over the course of three weeks in order to take state tests. The laptops were charged overnight and each grade level rotated the labs to complete the tests. In addition, the laptop labs were used as instructional tools since you could take practice tests and, as a teacher, I could see the results of my entire class, as well as the breakdown in percentage of each question and subgroup of students. This enhanced my teaching because I could see that 90 percent of my students passed algebra questions, but only 35 percent passed a geometry question. This told me that I needed to go back and review geometry. As for the state tests, we received our scores within a week…..and didn’t have teachers or administrators hand scoring or scanning anything. As for special education students, depending on their IEPs, they took the test on the computer in a separate classroom, or had the computer “read” the test aloud, or took a paper/pencil copy of it. It was awesome.

  14. mha says:


    Most colleges don’t want to see weighted grades. The colleges will calculate their own averages based on the core courses. They will also notice if the student is taking a challenging caseload (AP, IB) and take that into consideration. This year SUNY’s will be asking students to self-report thier own marks on thier electronic applications. The sole purpose of this is so they will be able to manipulate the data and come up with their own “weighted” averages. Some school districts down state have been abusing the “weighted” grade by inflating the overall GPA. Several districts have weighted thier grades so much that they calculate averages up to 115%. Most colleges are aware of this and that is why they would prefer to see unweighted averages and do their own calculations.

  15. Albany Mom says:

    @13 – The instant feedback thing is great, and something I wish our classrooms in NYS had more opportunity to use.

    I have a question about the scoring, though. I don’t yet have experience with Regents, but all the state subject tests my kids have taken have sections that are not multiple choice. They are short answer, long answer, essay, problems where you show your work, even tests showing you know how to use scientific equipment. Did your state only have multiple choice questions, or was there some other mechanism for technology-assisted grading for non-multiple choice questions?

  16. KTT says:

    @Albany Mom

    I taught at the upper elementary level so students took the Science, Social Studies, Reading, and Math tests on the computer. These were all multiple choice and the Writing test was hand written. I guess I can see now how it might be difficult since New York has some short answer and essay questions to use a computer. However, I still think for multiple choice tests, the online lab is the way to go!

  17. radamus says:

    @KTT, Ann, and Albany Mom,

    Here are links to reports done on AHS and Hackett Middle School to give you an idea of how things are done in ACSD.

    I know things are somewhat better in the suburban schools, but even a fairly well-to-do district like Guilderland for the most part seems to be several decades behind in their uses of technology, at least in some areas.

    Here is a link to a document outlining what sorts of changes ACSD is planning for AHS. I don’t seen anything in there about improved use of technology. Hopefully they are planning to do that and it’s just not in this document.

    Here is a little story about how some of the classes at AHS were taught up to at least 4 years ago. I found myself in a position to witness several HS boys hovering around and being very attentive to a girl I know they normally wouldn’t have been hanging out with. When all of them left except one of the boys I asked what all that was about. He said, “we all cut #### class today and ##### takes the best notes, so we were copying her notes and the homework assignment”. I told him that copying somebody’s notes wasn’t the same as being in the class where you can ask questions if you don’t understand something, and hear everything the teacher is saying. His response was that #### almost never lets people ask questions because it takes her so long to write the lesson on the blackboard, and that she doesn’t really talk, she just writes on the blackboard. I was curious to see what the lesson and homework were like, and basically the homework questions just had simple 1-to-1 correspondence with the lesson. For example lesson – “George Washington was the first president of the United States”. Homework – “Who was the first president of the United States?”.

    It seems to me this teacher could easily be replace by pc’s connected to a network. The computers would probably do a better job.

    If you are concerned about this issue I’d urge you to go to school board meetings and comment in the time set aside for public comment, and call or email the school board members.

  18. KR says:

    It does sound like a great idea, but with the massive cutbacks we’ve all be experiencing it’s not in the cards. The school I work in has, on average, 350 kids per grade. We don’t have enough desktops and laptops in our library for three 25 student classes to work at one time and the rolling laptop carts we have only serve another two classes at most. I would rather keep teachers and drive the tests to NERIC for scoring (which is what will happen this year).

    In regards to multiple choice questions for ELA– they don’t test much at the high school level. The test is terrible anyway.

  19. radamus says:

    Unfortunately there are all too many educators with your attitude. I’m offended by your arrogance and scared by your apparent inability to think creatively. All your objections to the use of laptops are the sorts of thing that any creative 12 your old could find solutions to. I urge you and other readers to do an internet search using the terms “every student has a laptop” and check out some of the results. There are schools, school districts, and whole countries that have implemented programs to make sure that every student has a laptop, and that the laptops are integrated with other software and non-computer instructional methods, including tests and test scoring, to improve the education of these children. If this sort of thing can be done in third world countries it can be done in the US, particularly in realtively wealthy districts like Guilderland. The only reason it’s not is because there are so many technophobic and technologically illiterate educators in this country, particularly NYS. I am so very tired of NYS educators thinking they know better than everybody else, including highly trained professionals in related fields. If any NYS educator doesn’t like the sorts of changes the tax paying public is going to force them to make, then MOVE TO A DIFFERENT PROFESSION. Lead,follow,or get out of the way.

  20. KTT says:


    The district I worked in also had major cuts….we didn’t receive a payraise going on five years in a row. But we had smartboards in almost every classroom as well as these labs. We got them by having teachers and administrators look over every single grant available and apply for them. Since we were considered a “Title 1″ school, we were able to receive extra money to put toward technology. And we didnt’ have to sacrifice any teachers in the process! Yes, it took time and more outside work, but it was worth it! I have previously worked in the Albany City Schools, even in the magnet schools. The technology is there and one of the technology teachers was old enough to be my grandmother and had no clue how to use the computer lab to enhance the education of students. Every single time a class went in there, they played a game on the computer. It drove me crazy!

  21. KC says:

    @radamus – before you go down the lavender path to oblivion, you had better check the research on the use of technology in classrooms and the ‘benefit’ provided students. A recent NYT article accurately pointed out that in fact technology infusion throughout a district was not making any more progress on student achievement.

  22. radamus says:

    If you look hard enough there is always some research or news paper aricle that will support any given point of view. There is plenty of research out there supporting the use of technology in the classroom. Do an internet search on “research use of technology in the classroom” and you will get plenty of hits that will point you to some of this research. Teachers’ unions are very much opposed to increased use of technology in the classroom since so many of their members are technophobic and see technology as a threat, so I fully expect to see lots of articles like the one you’ve mentioned. That article, by the way, was written by a reporter who’s specialtiy is highliting some of the negative effects of technology and similar type topics.(ex ‘Driven to Distraction’ – on cell phone use in cars). Hopefully education decision makers will dig deeper than one New York Times article.