Overall, most of the changes were insignificant and unlikely to change a school's status under No Child Left Behind, DOE officials said yesterday.

Last month, after officials announced the possible scoring errors, they said school scores on the Hawai'i State Assessment are likely to go up when some scoring errors are corrected.

"We won't have an idea until the actual numbers student-by-student are figured out," said Greg Knudsen, spokesman for the state Department of Education. "We still hope that a school won't lose its (Adequate Yearly Progress) status."

The first re-count of the suspected 1,971 test booklets was conducted on Oct. 23 and 24 at test scoring company MetriTech Inc., in Illinois. Two DOE observers were present during the re-count.

The review revealed that 600 booklets were scored but were actually blank. Another 192 books were partially completed but had some scoring errors.

Evelyn Hao, principal at Kuhio Elementary School, said initially she was concerned when mistakes in the scoring of the tests were revealed.

But following news yesterday that test scores at her school may improve, she said she was satisfied that education officials are trying to remedy the situation.

"There were concerns about the mistakes, but it didn't change the fact that we were confident in our progress based on our own assessments," Hao said.

She said testing the school did on its own leading up to last spring's Hawai'i State Assessment showed that students were improving.

HIGHER SCORES

Following the re-count, proficiency levels in grade 3 math increased at Kuhio Elementary by 5 percentage points, from 67 percent at or above proficient to 72 percent.

"We were already quite overjoyed over the former score. That was way beyond what the benchmark was," Hao said.

The 2001 federal No Child Left Behind law mandates that all students meet proficiency goals in basic subjects. All students in the country must perform at grade level standards by 2014.

Karen Knudsen, chairwoman of the state Board of Education, said board members are "very concerned and not happy at all" about the errors, especially when so much pressure is placed on schools to do well on the test.

"Because of the high-stakes testing and the harsh penalties ... scoring mistakes are not acceptable," she said.

Scoring errors on the Hawai'i State Assessment were announced last month, when officials discovered some 1,682 questionable booklets. The errors were found after some schools discovered that students who didn't take tests had incorrectly received scores.

Testing company American Institutes for Research and the test scanning company MetriTech Inc., accepted the blame for the errors and conducted a re-count of the suspect booklets last month. Another 289 test booklets were later added to the pile of questionable test booklets to be rescored.

The review of the 1,971 suspect booklets revealed a total of 792 errant test booklets — 600 blank and another 192 books were partially completed but had some scoring errors. However, 43 of those with errors had already been factored out of scoring, leaving 749 booklets with errors.

While the errors represent "a fraction of a percentage, they still need to be corrected," Knudsen said.

Blank booklets were removed from individual school scoring reports, resulting in improvements in proficiency levels at some schools.

PARTICIPATION LEVELS

While removal of the blank booklets helps some schools by increasing the proficiency levels, it also decreases the participation level, which must be 95 percent in various student categories in order for a school to meet No Child Left Behind.

So far DOE officials have not identified any school whose participation levels have negatively affected their current AYP status, Knudsen said.

When the scoring problems were announced last month, officials said that no school would have its current AYP status lowered as a result of the re-count. However, the final revised score will be used as a basis for comparison next year, Knudsen said.

State Rep. Roy Takumi, chairman of the Education Committee, said this is "one of the unfortunate outcomes of high-stakes testing."

He said even though the errors represent less than 1 percent of the 98,000 tests, he said errors cannot be accepted.

"It's like voting. One percent, two percent errors are unacceptable," Takumi said.

Reach Loren Moreno at lmoreno@honoluluadvertiser.com.