But so far, all these state of the art, cutting edge next gen tests have been just a bust:
INDIANAPOLIS — School districts across several states are rescheduling high-stakes tests that judge student proficiency and even determine teachers' pay because of technical problems involving the test administrators' computer systems.
Thousands of students in Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota and Oklahoma have been kicked offline while taking tests in recent weeks, postponing the testing schools planned for months and raising concerns about whether the glitches will affect scores.
"There's been pep rallies and spirit weeks all getting ready for this. It's like showing up for the big game and then the basketball is deflated," said Jason Zook, a fifth-grade teacher at Brown Intermediate Center in South Bend, Ind.
Many frustrated students have been reduced to tears and administrators are boiling over, calling the problems "disastrous" and "unacceptable" at a time when test results count so heavily toward schools' ratings under the federal No Child Left Behind law. In places such as Indiana, where former Gov. Mitch Daniels approved changes tying teachers' merit pay to student test scores, the pressure is even greater.
"Teachers are extremely frustrated because of the high-stakes nature of this test," said Jeff Sherrill, principal at Emmons Elementary School in Mishawaka, Ind. "They know they're going to be judged on this and their schools are going to be judged on this. Certainly it's changed the outcome of the testing, because there's no way it's not going to."
And just in case you think it's a case of one company's incompetence that can be remedied by bringing in another company, the problems are not related to one testing vendor:
CTB/McGraw-Hill is the contractor in Indiana and Oklahoma and administers statewide standardized tests in eight other states. Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman Nancy Rodriguez said its vendor, ACT Inc., reported online issues in Kentucky and Alabama. American Institutes for Research, or AIR, is the contractor in Minnesota.
Kentucky Department of Education Associate Commissioner Ken Draut said the agency suspended online testing through at least Thursday after about 25 districts reported slow and dropped connections from the ACT Vantage testing system used to administer end-of-course assessments for students taking English II, Algebra II, biology and U.S. history. About 60 percent of Kentucky districts administer the tests online.
In Indiana, McGraw-Hill is in the third year of a four-year, $95 million contract, while in Oklahoma, it has a one-year, $16 million contract with an option to renew an additional four years. Minnesota's $61 million, three-year contract with AIR expires this year. Rodriguez, reached at home, said she did not know the terms of Kentucky's ACT contract.
Here's how states are responding to the problems:
Indiana suspended testing Monday and Tuesday, the same days Oklahoma reported problems.
One Oklahoma lawmaker called for a moratorium on testing this year.
"We'll just start over next year when the testing provider has its act together," said Rep. Curtis McDaniel, D-Smithville, a longtime school administrator. "It's just not fair to these students to make them re-take tests two or three times or accept a score based on a partial test that may or may not be accurate because of technology problems."
Oklahoma State Superintendent Janet Barresi said the department is working to remedy the problem and then will determine "how to proceed with accommodations for the districts."
...
Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz said there's "no question" the state will have to review any data gathered in the past few days, when at least 27,000 third- through eighth-grade students were kicked offline during tests.
"After we get everybody assessed, we're going to have to look at the validity of the assessments themselves," Ritz said.
This is not the first time CTB.McGraw-Hill has had issues with its testing apparatus:
The Connecticut Department of Education fined CTB/McGraw-Hill $300,000 in 2004 for errors and delays in scoring its Mastery Test, the largest fine allowed under the state's contract.
In 2011, up to 10,000 Indiana students statewide were logged off and some were unable to log back in for up to an hour while taking the test. The state invalidated 215 scores that year because they were lower than expected.
About 9,000 Indiana students were kicked offline during the test last year.
It's a mess.
The next time you hear NYSED Commissioner John King or Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch brag about the quality of NY State testing, remember two things:
First, New York has yet to move to computerized testing but will in the next few years. You can be sure districts all over the state will experience these kinds of issues and worse - especially districts like NYC where bandwidth problems are already a challenge.
Second, New York officials are scared to reveal the contents of the tests these days, for fear that the new Common Core Pearson tests will be exposed as garbage the way the old Pearson tests were exposed last year.
The lawsuits will begin next year when teachers get VAMMED on the pencil and paper Common Core tests but are given little to no information for why they got VAMMED.
And then when NY State moves to computerized testing, you can expect even more lawsuits related to technology issues.
As Carol Burris noted over at NYC Educator's blog:
Do not worry. It is the full employment act for school attorneys. The system is so indefensible and silly, no one will get fired.
So far, that;s exactly the trajectory I see from all the vaunted Common Core reforms and changes to teacher evaluation systems.
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