Published: June 25, 2005 | By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN | New York Times

New York State education officials yesterday lowered the score needed to pass this year's Math B Regents exam, even as teachers were still grading the tests. The exam was given on Thursday.

Officials said that this year's test was actually easier than last year's, but teachers complained that too many students were going to fail because officials had raised the passing score too high to adjust for the easier exam.

Math B is the second part of the state's three-year mathematics curriculum for high school students and it includes advanced algebra and trigonometry among other topics.

Last June, students needed a raw score of 45 out of a total possible 88 points to get a converted score of 65, the passing mark on the exam. On this month's test, the state initially said students needed 53 out of 88 points to pass. Yesterday, however, the State Education Department changed the scoring chart so that only 48 points were needed to pass.

Tom Dunn, a spokesman for the Education Department, said officials did not yet know how many students had taken the exam or how many would have failed without the change in scores. "We consulted with math teachers around the state and responded quickly to the situation and corrected," he said. "We were directed by veteran teachers," he added. "They said it did not perform like other tests."

The problem with the Math B exam is the latest in a string of troubles with the state's Regents exams and seemed certain to provide new ammunition to critics of New York's standardized testing system who believe it is unreliable and harmful to children.

In June 2003, 63 percent of those who took the Math A exam failed it, prompting an outcry that the test, one of the five Regents exams that students must pass to graduate, had been too difficult.

At the time, the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills, acknowledged flaws and set aside the results for juniors and seniors. There were similar complaints that year about the physics exam. Officials initially defended the test, but in January 2004 they adjusted the scores for the two previous year's exams lifting the rate of students passing the test to 81 percent from 53 percent.

In February 2004, teachers had the opposite complaint about Math A: they said the test was far too easy.

Mr. Dunn did not offer an explanation for the mistake yesterday. The Math B test is not a graduation requirement and Mr. Dunn said the problem was discovered before most students knew their results. Alfred S. Posamentier, dean of the School of Education at the City College of New York, said he believed the math exams used decades ago were simpler and more reliable, and that the current tests, which are calibrated by experts called psychometricians, had only created confusion. "If they would take the psychometricians out of the picture and put math people in, I think we'd have a far better test," he said. "Let math people run the Regents test operation."