My daughter switched schools this year to go to a charter school that lets her work at her own pace. It's a big improvement.

She took the school standardized exams last spring and I am still trying to get results from them. Her old school told me they couldn't give me the scores because they only distribute scores at parent teacher conferences. Then they told me the scores were in the materials sent to her new school, so they couldn't give me the scores.

The new school says they did not receive the parent printout of scores (which explains the parts of the test). They gave me a printout of her scores from her state record, but it's incomprehensible (i.e., did she score 4 out of 4, out of 8, out of 100?).

I finally called the state department of education last week and talked with a testing specialist. I read off info from my printout and she couldn't figure it out either. She said to insist on getting the parent report from the old school.

Don't they have some sort of legal obligation to give me meaningful scores after all the time she had to spend preparing for and taking these exams? Talking with her old school has been completely unproductive. Do they have an obligation to give me these scores, or is it the responsibility of the new school (who did their best with the confusing report they gave me)?

Do you mind saying what state?

I can't on here, unfortunately. I may have to admit defeat with the scores, but it's frustrating. There is a guide to scores online from the state department of education, but it doesn't match what I have.

I see your point, though; the regulations probably differ by state about whether schools have to provide the scores.

Have you made the request in writing, through a formal letter? Sometimes a paper trail helps.

Interested parents may wish to look up FERPA. The U.S. Department of Education provides an easy-to-understand interpretation which comes up easily in a web search.

If in the US, FERPA is a federal law. http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html

From my reading they have a legal obligation to show you your kid's records.

I'm familiar with FERPA, but I know it doesn't cover everything. Would these scores count as being for he school's assessment purposes rather than to assess her? I'm not sure. I thought they could to things for their own assessment purposes that they weren't required to share. Also, I think part of the issue is that they are saying the new school has the responsibility while the new school says they weren't forwarded the paperwork. So who is responsible?

What worked for us is showing up at the school and saying, "Hi, I'd like to see my DD's record now, thanks."

If the parent report is just plain lost....at least in FL, I did some investigating and there is no way to get a parent report reprinted...one copy of the FCAT parent report is all that can be printed.

But you can make an appointment with someone in the original district very familiar with interpreting the data and have that person go over your child's scores on that print out.

I know that teachers get print outs and administrators get print outs and they sit for hours analyzing the data. My dh is a teacher and from his printout he could explain it all to you.

The parent report tells you the level. 1-5. 1 and 2 are below level, 3 three is proficient, 4 and 5 are highly proficient (but not above level). Then it gives you scaled scores that you can see year to year comparisons and then it breaks down say the reading test into about 3 or 4 types of questions and gives you how many say lit analysis questions he got right, how many total and state average of correct for those types of questions. There are a few graphs.

But the test does not test anything above grade level. It provide good information for 1, 2, and 3 scorers about strengths and weaknesses but for 4s and 5s they hit the ceiling and the funny thing I think is...with my son...it doesn't tell you if he would have scored exactly the same on the first day of school on the FCAT as he does in the spring.

So my advice is to get an appointment with the principal at the original school and say that the parent report is lost during the transfer of records and you need him or her to sit down with any printout they can find and go over it with you. If the principal can't he needs to provide the name of someone who can because they lost the parent report.

I've tried showing up at the school and it wasn't very helpful. I'm wondering if some of her scores are missing from her electronic record; it just doesn't seem to have everything listed as being tested. The principal isn't helpful; we made the final decision to switch schools after he wouldn't return my calls asking for a meeting (I caught him in the office once and he said he would call me, but didn't).

It probably isn't worth much effort, but I'm just curious to see how she did.

I wonder if their district curriculum specialist would be worth approaching? The superintendent asked her to meet with me about possible accommodations if my daughter returned to the district. We haven't been able to schedule it yet, but she is supposed to meet with me at some point. Maybe I could bring it to that meeting and try to get help...

Well at this point I would give up and take a look at this year's scores.

Yes, I think you are probably right. It isn't terribly important, but I'm always curious to get scores. I also think they might potentially be useful for negotiation if we did need to move her back (one person at the old school mentioned that she had an almost perfect score to back up her comment that "your daughter can't be accommodated by public school").

Still, homeschooling is looking better all the time and she seems to like the charter school.

After reading the title of the original post, I imagined one of those mission impossible scenes, with the ropes and black ninja outfits. After reading a bit more, that might be your only recourse; good thing it's mainly your curiosity more than anything else at stake at this point.