Statewide Crash of Online English Exams

On Tuesday, the statewide English exams for grades 3 through 8 were disrupted by computer glitches throughout the system. Some students received system error notifications, while others were unable to log into the online system at all. This is the second year in a row where online test takers had to deal with glitches and generally similar issues. This year, the problems were more pronounced due to the increase in districts participating in the online format. The State Education Department has said that schools that wish to go back to the paper version of the test may do so and that they are working with the Minnesota-based vendor, Questar, to address the issues. Additionally, future test times will be staggered to avoid system overload.

Statement from SED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia:

First and foremost, I would like to thank students, parents, teachers and administrators for their continued patience and support as we work through the difficulties that occurred this week with computer-based testing. I regret the hardship these difficulties have placed on school communities. I understand the changes we made may have presented unforeseen challenges. As a former school and district leader, I know the logistical burdens these shifts have caused, and I share your frustration. I thank school leaders for accommodating these necessary adjustments. While I would have liked to continue as planned, these changes were necessary to minimize additional adverse impacts to our school communities.

As we have done from the start, we will ensure no school is unfairly penalized for participating in computer-based testing. A thorough comparability analysis will be done to review the student computer-based results and paper-based results. We will make the appropriate adjustments to student scores as we did last year.

I am happy to report computer-based testing has gone well today. This morning, nearly 73,000 students participated in CBT. District and school leaders should continue with grades 5 and 8 computer-based testing tomorrow, as announced yesterday. On Monday, all schools may resume CBT as they choose and continue for the remainder of the testing period through April 12.

As always, I appreciate the hard work and dedication of our students, parents, teachers and administrators to implement our state assessments each year.