The mistake happened when a field that determines if a student was enrolled at a school at the start of the year was checked “no” for some students who were in attendance.
The error happened because a new software program used by districts changed a portion of the datasheet that cataloged student enrollment. Newport-Mesa didn’t catch the change, which district officials believe caused the error.
The error isn’t unusual and about 10% of schools need to change data due to some kind of error every year, said Robert Bernstein, administrator of the academic accountability unit at the California Department of Education. Due to the error, the scores of the schools affected may be higher or lower than the average would be if the scores for the missing students were taken into account.
The district is working on fixing the errors, but new tallies won’t be known until February.
“We are going to make sure every student is counted at every school,” said Peggy Anatol, director of assessment for the district. “[Scores] could go up and could go down. We just don’t know.”
The district is still figuring out who exactly was affected and to what extent, but it is known that the fourth-grade class at Rea Elementary School, seventh-graders at TeWinkle Middle School, and freshman at Estancia High School and Newport Harbor High School for the 2007-08 testing cycle were affected.
“There are 244,000 pieces of information in an identification file. Sometimes you are bound to have something you need to fix,” Anatol said.
Individual student scores sent home to parents during the summer vacation were accurate, Anatol said.
The corrected scores won’t be released until February because the state must wait for all districts to have the chance to change incorrect data and submit new figures before releasing any new numbers, Bernstein said.
The state will collect corrected data in mid-December and release new data the following year.
DANIEL TEDFORD may be reached at (714) 966-4632 or at daniel.tedford@latimes.com.
