Sixty-five students at Chelsea Career and Technical HS came into school on Aug. 13 to retake their English language arts Regents exams after their answer books literally fell off a truck in June.
When the Department of Education gave up on finding the tests, teachers came in over the summer to locate the students and break the bad news to them and their families.
English teachers Jan Scott and Erin Woodward offered a week of tutoring beforehand, though not all students could attend. On test day, students confronted heavy rain and a harder test.
“Some of the multiple-choice questions were harder,” Scott said, “and Part 3, the controlling idea, some were stumped with that.” When they originally took their Regents in June, she said, students felt they aced the test.
Chelsea Tech rising senior Fredy Reyes could take only one day off his summer job at a children’s arts workshop to prep for the test.
“From how I feel, I’m going to end up getting a lower score,” he said. “The exam was definitely harder, and I was less prepared.”
He is hoping to minor in journalism in college so his ELA score is important to his applications.
Test-maker McGraw-Hill transported some 300,000 booklets by truck to a scoring site in Connecticut, and the mishap reportedly occurred along the way. It was not the only problem with the Regents. Teachers who showed up to grade the exams in June sat in scoring centers for hours with nothing to do because McGraw-Hill fell behind in providing scanned answer sheets to score.