It is impossible to score between 271-279. Further, if you have a raw score of 66, you score 262-Advanced. Miss one more and you drop to 258-no longer Advanced. Based on raw scores, I expected to see several students score in the Advanced category in 1999, but the scaling changed and only one made it. This unusually high cluster at a critical point is problematic.
Readability remains an issue.
Political pressure to maintain standards aside, the situation in fourth grade must be corrected. These results were published in the January 10 Boston Globe . Basically, the state takes a school's average scores in English, Math, and Science and determines a performance score, ranging on a six-point scale, from Critically Low to Very High. The truly absurd part of this equation is that, using 1998 as a baseline, the state determines an improvement goal. The average of 1999 and 2000 scores is used to determine if a school has met its improvement goal.