Texas STAAR tests canceled Tuesday for many after technical issues

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Texas education officials have advised districts to suspend day one of STAAR testing after thousands of students showed up in person and were barred from taking the standardized test online due to widespread technical issues in statewide.

“If your students were able to access the test, they should continue with the test. If your students were unable to access the test, they should be excluded from the test until the problem is resolved, ”the message from the Texas Education Agency reads.

Texas officials have mandated students to take the Texas state’s in-person academic readiness assessments this year at supervised testing sites, though millions of students are continuing their education remotely due to the pandemic coronavirus.

The outages affected districts administering the online tests and ranged from slow response times to the inability of students to log in to the test. Writing tests for fourth and seventh graders were disrupted, as well as English I tests for high school students, according to TEA. Online testing will resume on Wednesday.

TEA plans to transfer the test fully online by the 2022-2023 academic year. For districts that also planned to administer paper-based tests with Scantrons, students who took those versions were able to continue testing.

“We understand the frustration this has caused to students, parents, teachers and administrators,” the TEA statement said. “What happened today is totally unacceptable.”

The Educational Testing Service, one of the companies the state has contracted to develop and administer the test, is investigating the problem, according to the message from the TEA. STAAR tests typically have a time limit of four or five hours, depending on their subject, and testing is scheduled until May 14.

Dr Mark Henry, superintendent of the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, said online testing had been down statewide for before 9 a.m.

Austin ISD students waited nearly two hours in person to take the test. Dick Frazier, a music teacher at Austin ISD, also said there was a shortage of devices in his district for all students who showed up to take the test online.

“In some cases, these kids have never been to our school before, because they were in the pandemic all last year and have been in the pandemic this year,” Frazier said.

Although the test is mandatory this year, there is no penalty for elementary and high school students who fail or fail the STAAR test this year. Texas officials said the test would not affect students’ ability to advance to the next class.

But high school students must pass five subject-specific courses before graduating, a requirement that will not be waived this year. Henry said that expecting students to take a standardized, high-stakes in-person test this spring was “ridiculous,” and he attributed the pressure to administer STAAR this year to the $ 64 million contract from the State with the test company.

“There’s a lot of pressure on people to make sure these contracts get delivered,” Henry said. “So this spring the tests are not aimed at improving academic performance. It’s about improving the results of a testing business. “

STAAR online tests have already encountered technical problems. In 2018, software kicked thousands of students off the test while it was still in progress and didn’t allow them to reconnect. In 2016, computer issues across the state affected more than 14,000 tests.

Disclosure: Educational Testing Service has been a financial supporter of the Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations, and sponsors. Donors play no role in the Tribune‘journalism. Find a full list here.