While individual schools' scores on the high-stakes Hawai'i State Assessment are likely to go up when some scoring errors are corrected, schools that thought they had met all their No Child Left Behind goals might find they fell short in participation, state education officials said.

Under the federal law meant to improve student achievement in basic subjects, the percentage of kids who take the test has as much weight as their scores in math and reading.

As a result, the accidental scoring of more than 1,600 blank test booklets revealed earlier this week could mean that schools that otherwise performed well might find they didn't meet all the required criteria.

"Sometimes the swing of one test result could make a difference," said Department of Education spokesman Greg Knudsen. "It's so pass-fail, win-lose. That's one of the criticisms of No Child Left Behind."

The 2001 federal law mandates that all students meet proficiency goals in basic subjects with the expectation that all students in the country will be performing on grade level by 2014. As the standards ratchet higher, so does the pressure on schools to teach to the test or risk facing sanctions ranging from mandatory tutoring to "restructuring," a complete overhaul of the school.

All 98,000 Hawai'i State Assessment tests administered last school year will be reviewed due to scoring errors, but only about 1,682 are in question after schools discovered that students who didn't take tests had incorrectly received scores. That was because of scanning problems at MetriTech, a Champaign, Ill.-based company that was subcontracted to score the multiple-choice parts of the test.

MetriTech did not return calls seeking comment.

The cost of the review will be covered by the testing company, American Institutes for Research.

The blank books were likely given low scores, so the re-scanned tests should slightly raise the average math and reading scores at affected schools.

But those schools that only had the minimum participation requirement could be hurt if it turns out fewer students took the test than originally thought.

The DOE has decided that a school's status will only be raised, not lowered, due to altered scores out of respect to those schools that might find they've not hit the targets after all.

"How disappointing and unfair it would be based on scanning problems," Knudsen said.

The new scores will be used for comparison with the next set of test results, however, so schools who see lower scores might need to make up extra ground next year.

Hawai'i State Teachers Association executive director Joan Husted said this problem arises when the pressure of meeting No Child Left Behind goals already is dragging down morale at public schools.

"It's unfortunate that things like this happen because it continues to damage the credibility of the department even though it wasn't the department's error," she said. "They always take it on the chin when anything goes wrong."

She worried about how students will react if their school ends up missing its goals after the tests are rescored.

"To take youngsters and tell them that their school is failing because one group or another didn't make a magic number ... the kids are going to think, 'Why try?' after a while," she said.

State Rep. Roy Takumi, chairman of the Education Committee, said that this kind of problem has been happening all over the nation, due to the emphasis placed on standardized tests under No Child Left Behind.

The law has helped make testing a billion-dollar industry and companies have had to ramp up quickly to win contracts. With no government oversight over these testing companies, "You're going to have some quality-control glitches," Takumi said.

Takumi and Knudsen noted that Hawai'i isn't the only state that has had problems with its testing due to companies' errors.

Nearly a year after Illinois students took the state's achievement test, the results are finally complete, according to the state Board of Education.

In Illinois, for instance, statewide test results were delayed for months by test-distribution glitches, scoring problems and data-entry errors blamed on a testing company hired by the state. Consequently, results of tests taken in spring 2006 were not released until March 2007.

Sen. Jill Tokuda, vice chairwoman of the education committee in the Hawai'i Senate, said it's also a pity that Hawai'i's scoring problem came up in the wake of criticism of the tests' content.

"People want to have confidence in their tests, and this casts a shadow of doubt," she said.

She wants safeguards that prevent these types of errors.

"When tests aren't scored accurately, it's really an injustice to the schools that have worked so hard," she said. "I think there's probably some level of frustration because they do work very hard to prepare students for the test."

School board member Donna Ikeda said the scoring errors will only contribute to what she believes is the public's growing skepticism in the testing process.

"At a time when we need to give people confidence in the test, this doesn't help," she said.

Ikeda said she supports the policy of not altering a school's Adequate Yearly Progress status based on recounted scores.

"I don't think it's right to penalize a school after the fact," she said.

Reach Treena Shapiro at tshapiro@honoluluadvertiser.com.