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In reply to the discussion: First Ohio girl to win masonry competition gets replaced by a 3rd place boy at Nationals. [View all]oberliner
(58,724 posts)Haplin said actions are being taken to improve the scoring process. Below is her full statement, on behalf of SkillsUSA, to WSAZ:
"During the 2016 SkillsUSA Ohio masonry competition, student scores were entered into score sheets by judges. Those scores were then entered into a spreadsheet manually to calculate final scores. When student scores were entered into the final score spreadsheet, an error was made and some scores were inadvertently duplicated, causing some students to receive double the score that they actually received. This error affected results for several students and resulted in the rankings showing an incorrect winner of the competition.
"No errors were made in the judges' score sheets themselves, and the final corrected scores reflect the scores on the individual score sheets for each student. Upon discovery of the error through the regular review process, the duplicate scores were removed to show the actual winner of the competition. SkillsUSA confirmed that Ohio has followed all policies pertaining to the resolution of errors.
"The student who should have been awarded the gold medal at the competition will be the one to represent Ohio as the national competitor. The student who was incorrectly named the winner at the state competition is still invited to attend and observe the national competition. Corrective actions are being taken to improve the scoring process.
"Regarding the way the student was informed of the error, the Ohio Department of Education's policy is to communicate with each student's school district, rather than with the students themselves. As soon as the error was discovered, administrators from all affected students' school districts were contacted."
http://www.wsaz.com/content/news/Teen-girl-from-Scioto-County-bumped-from-national-masonry-competition-383877471.html
Incidentally, from that same article:
Larry Moore, Clifford's instructor at the technical center, says this is not the first time SkillsUSA has taken a title away from one of his students. He says in 2010, the same thing happened to another junior student of his, a boy. He says about two weeks after the boy won the state competition, his title was also taken away because of a scoring error.