For the second year in a row, a handful of states experienced significant disruptions in online testing, creating such a high level of distrust with the technology-based process that some districts chose to revert to paper-and-pencil tests in an effort to avoid problems.
Florida, Kansas, and Oklahoma all suspended online testing at some point during testing windows in April because of computer glitches that led to slow load times or kicked students out of the assessment systems. Indiana districts reported problems during the week of April 21, as they did practice testing, but, as of mid-week last week, officials from the state’s department of education reported that only one district was beset by significant glitches.
In each of those states, the testing problems were attributed to the assessment provider. In Oklahoma, where 8,100 students in grades 6-12 experienced disruptions, the trouble arose from CTB/McGraw-Hill, which reported a hardware malfunction. That same issue was blamed for problems in Indiana, which also contracts with Monterey, Calif.-based CTB/McGraw-Hill, during the practice-testing period.
