The Testing Business

SATs Scored in Error by Test Companies Roil Admissions Process

By David Glovin and David Evans

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Jerry Lee Faine Elementary School in Dothan, Alabama, starts each day with two hours of reading and vocabulary. After that, there's arithmetic. ``If you can read, you can do anything,'' says Principal Deloris Potter, a spry woman of 59 who has run the school since 2002.

...11- year-old Alexis Szoka took dozens of practice exams last year leading up to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. She wound up a nervous wreck. ``My daughter has such test anxiety, she can't take a test anymore,''...

Potter, trusting the work of her teachers, was confident of passing grades in April 2005 as students began two weeks of mandatory standardized testing in reading and math. That July, state education officials told Potter her school had failed the Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test. The state warned it might fire teachers if scores didn't improve, she says. A dozen students transferred after the substandard rating. Faculty morale plunged.

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