On the first day of online testing in Tennessee schools, a network outage forced students to stop taking the state’s new achievement test, causing a delay in the much-anticipated rollout of the TNReady exam.
Major outages occurred statewide at 8:25 a.m. CST on the MIST platform developed by Measurement Inc., the North Carolina-based company that created the test, according to an email to superintendents from state Education Commissioner Candice McQueen.
“These outages were caused because the network utilized by Measurement Inc. experienced a failure,” McQueen wrote. “We are urgently working with Measurement Inc. to identify the causes and correct the problem. At this time, we are advising that schools experiencing problems with the test discontinue testing, and return to their normal classes. Please do not begin any new additional testing you had planned for today until the department provides further information.“
Due to a lengthy testing window that began on Monday and continues through March 4, it’s unclear how many schools were impacted statewide.
However, in Nashville, 30 schools were administering the test on Monday and six reported glitches, according to Joe Bass, a spokesman for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.
Students who had not yet encountered technological difficulties were told to finish the assessment.
District leaders stressed to teachers and parents that the outages were not due to local technology problems. McQueen told superintendents that Measurement Inc. was aware of the problem.
Technology troubles have plagued several states in recent years in the transition to online testing, causing mistrust over the validity of scores and testing platforms.
As word spread about Monday’s outages, critics of the new test — and the inclusion of data from the tests in teacher evaluations — quickly cited the technology glitches as an indictment of the State Department of Education.
“#TNReady crashes statewide … is TDOE still perplexed why boards across the state are asking for grace for teachers and kids from scores?” Knox County school board member Amber Rountree tweeted upon learning the news.
Tennessee Education Association President Barbara Gray quickly blasted the state Education Department’s handling of the transition, citing concerns about the state’s capacity to accommodate so many students on the server at one time, as well as concerns about local districts having enough resources to complete the testing.
“It is unacceptable to have this kind of statewide failure when the state has tied so many high-stakes decisions to the results of this assessment,” Gray said. “Our students and teachers have enough stress and anxiety around these assessments without adding additional worries about technical issues.
Gray called on the state to grant at least a one-year waiver from including TNReady scores in teacher evaluations, although state officials have said that districts have discretion whether they choose to use that data this year on personnel decisions.
Last week, Department of Education officials told reporters they were prepared for widespread technology difficulties.
Chief Information Officer Cliff Lloyd said that he wasn’t as concerned about major failures such as servers crashing. “Those big things are easy to fix,” he said at the time. “I’m worried about small things that can occur on certain operating systems in certain conditions.”
As part of the state’s contingency plans, districts can request paper-based tests if technical problems persist and also can administer TNReady later than the state-assigned testing window.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated from an earlier version.