BIDDEFORD — An error caught by Biddeford school officials has caused the Maine Department of Education to review the high school’s assessment scores. 

Biddeford High School Principal Britt Wolfe said the Maine High School Assessment scores released during the third week of August were far lower than last year’s. 

“They were really terrible and we immediately started to take it apart, asking ‘What’s going on here? What’s happened?’ ” Wolfe said. 

The scores, which are based on reading, writing and math tested by the SAT and science tested by the Maine Educational Assessment, showed 11th-grade students’ proficiency rates were much lower than the state average. Wolfe declined to give specific numbers.

Wolfe said he started comparing the assessment scores with SAT data he received earlier this year and realized the number of students tested did not match. 

In fact, there were 107 students not calculated in the school’s assessment, according to Maine Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin. It appears the company running the data from test scores entered those students as homeschooled and therefore did not include them in the overall report. 

“So, unfortunately, the school administrators presented information to the school board which had shown a fairly noticeable decline and realized the day after why that was,” Connerty-Marin said. 

The department has yet to officially publish school assessment scores and is working with the company to rerun the test data for Biddeford High School. Connerty-Marin said the updated report should be available within the next two weeks.

“My anticipation, prior to receiving the scores, was (the school would be) on par with last year,” Wolfe said. “I was looking for improvement, certainly not for things to have gotten worse.”