Collierville High suspends TNReady testing again

Another TNReady software mishap caused Collierville High to suspend testing for the morning on Wednesday.

The issue affected other districts, state spokeswoman Sara Gast said, but it’s unclear how many.

The Germantown Municipal School District and Bartlett City Schools reported no issues.

Collierville Schools Chief of Staff Jeff Jones said the issue was with the system’s rosters for each class. Only the high school was affected.

The testing system creates a default roster of students and assumes their teacher will proctor the test. Schools can move students around, combining classes to test together, or pulling students out of the class who are approved to take extra time on the test.

Schools have to alter the testing roster in the system ahead of the exam to reflect that.

A software update done overnight by testing company Questar Assessments caused the already sorted rosters to reset, Jones said, and it was too hard to untangle quickly. He said they expect the issue to be worked out today.

Gast said the majority of schools use a default roster.

“We acknowledge that this could be a large inconvenience to those who do use this practice, and we regret that they will have to repeat these steps they had taken previously to re-roster students where this occurred,” she said in an email.

The issue is the latest in a string of online testing failures over the past week and a half. All high school students were required to take the test online this year, and some districts opted for their middle school students to do so as well.

On the first day of testing last week, students were not able to log into the system and most tests were canceled for the day. The following day, students could log in but could not submit their completed tests.

State Education Commissioner Candice McQueen said the Questar system likely experienced a cyber attack. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and Tennessee Office of Homeland Security have launched investigations into that attack.

Last week, the legislature took action to make sure students and teachers aren’t penalized for poor results on this year’s tests. Test results this school year will count only if it benefits students, educators and districts.

Districts can’t base employment or compensation decisions based on the data, the legislation says.

Reach Jennifer Pignolet at jennifer. pignolet@commercialappeal.com or on Twitter @JenPignolet.