PUBLISHED: September 23, 2006 | By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN | New York Times

A day after New York State released results of the 2005-6 reading and writing exam, city officials said the scores showed that they had required 339 students to repeat fifth grade even though, it turned out, they had scored high enough on the English test to be promoted.

That was a turnaround from Thursday, when the city said the scores showed that they had mistakenly promoted children in the spring who failed to meet Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s criteria. The officials said the state released annual scores later than usual.

The city’s reversal came after state officials reacted furiously to being blamed, saying the state had bent over backward to provide the city with preliminary data.

“The facts show this is completely wrong in every respect,” said Alan Ray, a spokesman for the State Education Department.

The chancellor’s office said that parents of the children wrongfully held back would now be given the choice of leaving them where they are or pushing them up to sixth grade.

The backdrop for the confusion was a new set of tests used this year.

The state English scores are normally unveiled before the school year ends. But because the exams were new, extra time was needed to figure out how to score them.

Knowing the results would be delayed, New York City had initially planned to administer two sets of exams: the state tests and a city test to enforce the mayor’s promotion rules in grades 3, 5 and 7.

After an outcry from parents about double testing, state and city officials reached a deal — the state would give the city a preliminary analysis of scores in time for the city to make promotion decisions in June.

City officials said that their initial conclusion on Thursday that they had wrongly promoted students stemmed from a quick and faulty analysis of the test results.