EVANSVILLE— After two days of "system errors" and an impromptu shutdown by the Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, the state's standardized exam for elementary and middle school students is ready to resume today.
Hopefully.
CTB/McGraw-Hill, the vendor hired by the state to administer the ISTEP-Plus, posted on its website around 7:30 a.m. a status that "systems are ready to go."
The message also requests that schools decrease their daily test load by 50 percent to allow flexibility in the online system's load/memory capacity. It recommends, for example, rather than testing two grade levels at the same time, a school should make arrangements to only test one.
"If it is determined that we can increase the daily test load beyond 50 percent, we will notify your Corporation Test Coordinator via email," the company stated.
Computer glitches that plagued the system began around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday after CTB-McGraw-Hill had assured the exam would be administered flawlessly following the same trouble Monday. The inaccurate promise prompted frustration from teachers and students across the state. Nearly 27,000 students were unable to access the exam, which evaluates the abilities of students and performance of teachers.
The company is currently under a four-year, $95 million contract with Indiana through June 2014. The contract requires McGraw-Hill to provide "uninterrupted" computer availability every school day from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. for the two weeks prior to each testing window, as well as for the entire testing window.
In 2011, up to 10,000 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 students were kicked offline during the test last year.