Glitch in state testing lets educators down
The state Department of Education’s testing software crash, which led to the lastminute decision Monday to abandon a digital test for paper and pencils this year, had Shelby County Schools Superintendent Dorsey Hopson adding up in his head the costs it took his district to be ready for an online test.
He estimated the district spent about $5 million, including the purchase of 4,500 new computers, to get students ready to take state tests online this year. But to him, that wasn’t the biggest loss.
“In addition to the bottomline number, just the time that we spent, instructional time, learning to manipulate the machines, taking a bunch of online tests to make sure kids were ready,” he said.
But Hopson, one of several school and government leaders who reacted to the software debacle with a combination of understanding and disappointment, said he thought the state made the right call to switch to the paper tests.
The company that contracts with the state for the online test, which now will have to print and ship the paper tests free of charge, was not happy with the decision.
Measurement Inc., the contractor for the state’s online
tests, said in a statement Tuesday the company was “very disappointed by this decision which was due to computer server issues that prevented some students from logging into the MIST online system on the first day of test administration.”
Despite the connectivity issues, 19,720 students were able to complete the test Monday, the company said. Measurement Inc.’s president Henry H. Scherich said the company has successfully administered online tests since 2010 and “believes that the server overload problem has been corrected.”
So far, $1.6 million has been paid to Measurement Inc., Education Commissioner Candice McQueen said. The state’s contract with the company, worth nearly $108 million, will be reviewed.
McQueen said Tuesday the state is committed to moving forward with online testing in the future, and that infrastructure and technology investments needed to take a test online will not go to waste.
She acknowledged the system had experienced technical difficulties prior to Monday’s launch, but said they each had been addressed.
“The problems we saw yesterday were new problems and unrelated to the technical improvements that we’ve worked tirelessly to make and unrelated to the guidance that we shared with districts last week,” she said on a conference call with media Tuesday morning.
McQueen’s office said 24 school districts requested paper tests after they were offered last week.
Germantown Municipal Schools Superintendent Jason Manuel said McQueen’s offer made superintendents across the state “concerned that they had not resolved all the issues on their end, and obviously they hadn’t.”
Germantown has made technology upgrades a priority, so network upgrades had already been made regardless of the plans for online testing. But Manuel said the district purchased four carts of computers, worth $30,000 each, just for students to be able to take tests online. They will be used in subsequent years, but the push to do testing online this year made buying them last year a necessity.
This was to be the first year the TNReady tests, which are replacing the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, would be taken online. But within minutes of the testing window opening Monday, the software crashed statewide.
In Nashville on Tuesday, Democratic lawmakers gathered to express concern about the last-minute change to paper tests and appeal to McQueen to eliminate all TN Ready test results from teacher evaluations for the next three years.
“We are here for the taxpayers who are footing the bill for yet another failed experiment in education in Tennessee, that is costing the state in excess of $100 million,” state Rep. Antonio Parkinson, DMemphis, said.
Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley, the House Democratic leader, said he hopes legislation will be filed to exclude TN Ready test scores from teacher evaluations this year.
“Everybody knew this was going to happen,” Fitzhugh said. “We just didn’t know it was going to happen in the first 15 minutes of the test.”
McQueen said districts will know by Thursday when they will be able to resume testing.
While she acknowledged teachers have put significant work into getting students ready for an online test, she said those skills are necessary whether students are taking state tests online or not. “We do not believe that’s time lost,” she said.