Maryland’s Inspector General for Education issued a report Monday evening saying that the state education department correctly removed some test score data from its website in order to adhere to state and federal laws.
Richard P. Henry determined that the state had correctly removed publicly reported data on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program in February after Fox 45 identified schools that had no students who had passed the math test in certain grades.
Federal law doesn’t allow state or local education agencies to release a student’s personal academic data. When less than 5% of a grade has passed an MCAP test, and the grade has less than 30 students in it, the number of students that has passed the test is replaced with an asterisk. A group of Republican legislators had complained to the Maryland State School Superintendent Mohammed Choudhury that he was intentionally hiding poor test results from the public.
“The OIGE [Office of the Inspector General for Education] found no evidence to substantiate these allegations,” the report reads.
In the report, Henry found that the state did not go beyond what is required by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, known as FERPA, and that it was correct in redacting the information.
