Parents who have received their children's 2008 Proficiency Assessment for Wyoming Students results should be aware the report has a printing error, according to the Wyoming Department of Education.

The expository and expressive writing scores are switched on the report's writing item summary. This means a student's expressive writing score on PAWS is actually his expository writing score, and vice versa.

The Wyoming Department of Education sent a memo to all schools advising them to destroy all reports not sent to parents. Schools will receive corrected reports in September.

The mistake was a printing error made by Pearson, Wyoming's testing vendor, according to Laurel Ballard, supervisor of the state's education quality and accountability unit.

"It's just a minor thing," Ballard said. "The problem is some schools have sent out reports."

Ballard said the writing summaries are provided to give parents a visual of how their student is performing on the PAWS test.

Trevor Mahlum, the assessment data coordinator in Natrona County, said the district forwards all individual reports to the schools, who are then responsible for sending the reports to parents. He did not know whether any schools had begun forwarding reports to parents.

In July, Pearson alerted the Wyoming Department of Education to an error the state's former testing vendor made on Adequate Yearly Progress calculations for 2007. Once the error was corrected, test scores for three schools and about 200 students were changed and, as a result, they met key AYP benchmarks.

Pearson purchased Harcourt Assessments in May 2007.

Before the acquisition, state officials reported problems with the delivery of assessment results, how tests were scored, the time needed to complete the tests, and computer glitches during testing in recent years.

The company's $13.9 million contract with the state to oversee the testing expires in October.

Reach education reporter Jasa Santos at (307) 266-0593 or at Jasa.Santos@trib.com.