Online testing error delays STAAR testing for students

The Texas Education Agency Student Assessment Division announced Tuesday connectivity issues during the first day on the STAAR Online Testing Platform which affected fourth grade writing, seventh grade writing and English I exams. Locally, Graham ISD was also impacted by the outages which occurred statewide and could resume testing those exams Tuesday.

TEA posted updates to the STAAR Assessment Management System dashboard Tuesday every 10 minutes to keep districts on top of progress to resolve the issue. This was the first of five days students were eligible to take one of three tests affected by the issues online.

“We understand the frustration this has caused students, parents, teachers, and administrators. What happened today is completely unacceptable. ETS (Educational Testing Service), the testing vendor, experienced problems with their database system, which are in the process of being corrected. The 2021 online administration of STAAR will be ETS’s last for the State of Texas. Beginning next school year, Cambium Assessment will be taking over these critical testing functions to ensure that users have a seamless online testing experience moving forward,” TEA Commissioner Mike Morath wrote in a press release. “All involved in public education in Texas should expect better than what they have experienced today; we are working to ensure that our students do not experience future testing issues.”

For the rest of the story, see the April 10 edition of The Graham Leader.