Online student-testing glitch fixed, vendor says
Ohio’s online standardized test system should be ready to use again Thursday after a technical problem shut it down Wednesday, the Ohio Department of Education says.
This was hours after many students across the state were unable to log in to the system Wednesday to take their mandated assessments. Many school districts canceled testing for the day and rescheduled it for a later date.
“AIR (The American Institutes for Research) notified and assured the Ohio Department of Education that it resolved the login system issue and tested it to confirm the fix,” Education Department spokeswoman Brittany Halpin said in an emailed statement. “Schools should plan to resume testing Thursday.
“To the extent possible,” she continued, “we’re encouraging schools to complete their English language arts testing within the original window. However, for those schools that are unable to do so, we’re extending the English language arts testing window statewide by two days, through May 1.”
Around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, the state’s Office of Curriculum and Assessment emailed a notice to school officials throughout Ohio, apologizing for the inconvenience.
The glitch made for a very bad day at work for district technology coordinators and other school administrators. School schedules are set months in advance to accommodate the state tests twice a year. Curriculum is planned around that schedule. And then there are the students who have test anxiety as it is.
Groveport Madison schools decided to cancel and reschedule instead of waiting for word from the state, said spokesman Jeff Warner.
“It’s better just to start afresh than to try to modify our plans and throw the students off kilter,” Warner said. “We want to ensure we have as calm and comfortable an environment as possible so that students can do their best.”
Columbus City Schools were able to get the middleand high-schoolers through the test if they had logged in before 9:15 a.m., said spokesman Scott Varner. The rest, mainly elementary schools that were supposed to be taking the English language arts test, will be rescheduled for either later this week or early next week.
“This is the first time we’ve experienced an outage like this in the several years we’ve been doing testing online,” Varner said.
The state gives school districts a window of time in which to complete their standardized tests in the fall and spring, and the districts set their testing schedule based on that. For English language arts, the window was supposed to be March 26 through April 27, but it’s now been extended to May 1 for schools that need more time. For tests in math, science and social studies, the window is April 2 through May 11.
State law required all schools to take standardized tests online by the 2016-17 school year. State report cards evaluating schools’ performance rely heavily on the outcomes of these tests.