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ity education officials were forced to recall test preparation materials for math exams late Wednesday after discovering that they were rife with errors, including basic arithmetic mistakes.

The materials were intended for math students in grades 3 through 7, but the faulty information – at least 18 errors – was found before it reached classrooms. The testing guides were e-mailed late Wednesday to regional instructional specialists, math coaches and local instructional superintendents and recalled a few hours later.

Some answers in the guide were wrong. Other questions suffered from odd wording, the incorrect notation of exponents and sloppy diagrams. Besides the math mistakes, there were problems with grammar and spelling. For instance, the word “fourth” was misspelled on the cover of the fourth-grade manual.

According to school officials, a fact-checker within the department failed to do a proper job.

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“They should not be allowed to make all kinds of excuses,” said Jane Hirschmann, co-chairwoman of a parents’ organization called Time Out From Testing. “The fact is, if third- or fifth-grade students made the mistakes made in the test prep materials, they would be flunked and no one would be asking them for an explanation.”