BENSONHURST'S PREMIER NEWS BLOG

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Students at a Bensonhurst school faced the ultimate scare when a packing error almost forced them to spend July and August in summer school. The New York Post reports that students at I.S. 227 Edward B. Shallow (6500 16th Avenue) received terrifying letters from their school mistakenly informing them they failed the state English exams and that they would be forced to attend summer school as a result.

The 25 students, aged 13 to 14, panicked when they received letters informing them that they had all failed their state English exams. The letters made no mention of administrative errors. As a result, parents and students began contemplating worst-case scenarios.

“My family has summer-vacation plans, and it isn’t right that we might have to change them,” 13-year-old Mindy Tong Told the Post. “I was sure that I did well and that I was going to graduate. Now I’m unsure of everything.”

Luckily, the Department of Education acknowledged their error and found that the answer keys were placed in the wrong box, forcing the tests to be graded as failures when they were mailed to the scoring site.

Department of Education spokeswoman Erin Hughes ensured that they had contacted the families affected concerning the errors and that the tests would be properly scored today.

Still, summer school isn’t all that bad is it? Unless Hollywood and Carl Reiner lied to me all these years, summer school is the place where you get to hang out at the beach, play a bunch of practical jokes on your teacher and get involved in a bunch of various sexy adventures. Right?

Source: Prevail via Wikimedia Commons

Reports of more erroneous state-wide exams have surfaced. First, there were issues with an eighth-grade reading exam that had a bizarre and confusing passage about a pineapple. Now, fourth and eighth-grade math test have questions with more than one correct answer and others with no correct answer at all.

The second set of examination issues have raised concerns about Pearson, the company that is in their first year of a five-year, $32M contract to manage the tests for New York State, according to Gotham Schools.

“If our children make errors on these high-stakes exams, this will have negative consequences for them, as well as for their teachers and schools,” said Leonie Haimson, the parent activist who first alerted the media regarding the pineapple passage. “So why should Pearson, which had nearly $2 billion in profits last year, be left off the hook for their sloppy mistakes?”

Information given to schools proctors states they may tell a test-taker that a question could have two possible answers, but only if they asked.

Parents, what do you think of these “sloppy” mistakes on state-wide examinations?