Indiana school administrators and students had company as they confronted a second day of online testing woes Tuesday.
Students taking the Oklahoma Core Curriculum and End of Instruction tests were again stalled Tuesday after getting the go-ahead to resume testing after similar problems on Monday — the same problem that plagued Hoosier students.
Both states use CTB/McGraw-Hill to administer the online testing.
Oklahoma Department of Education Communication Director Sherry Fair said administrators thought the issue had been resolved after the service was tested Tuesday morning, but the system crashed again.
Tests were up and running for about an hour later in the day, but administrators were unsure if the issues have been resolved, she said.
“They’re not ready to call it a win yet,” Fair said.
The issues in Oklahoma are similar to those in Indiana, with students being kicked out of the test, Fair said.
Some students struggled through the disruptions to complete the test, but Fair said officials are uncertain about whether those tests were correctly recorded.
“It’s frustrating for students, teachers, administrators and parents,” Fair said.
Also like Indiana, Fair said there will be issues in completing the tests in their prescribed windows. She said End of Instruction testing is scheduled to end May 10, while the computer tests for sixth- to eighth-grade Core Curriculum is scheduled to end today. She said accommodations will have to be made.
“It’s hard to devise what, but there will be accommodations,” she said. “We want to get it up and running and students successfully tested first.”
The Oklahoma Department of Education’s contract with CTB/McGraw-Hill is similar to Indiana’s. Both departments have contracts that can be renewed or revoked yearly. Indiana’s contract is set to expire next year.
McGraw-Hill spokesman Dan Sieger said the company has similar contracts with the education departments in Alabama, Georgia, Colorado, Missouri, North Dakota, West Virginia, Washington state and Washington, D.C.
Schools in those areas are not testing this week and therefore didn’t see the problems, but Sieger said it’s common for testing in different states to overlap as is happening this week with Indiana and Oklahoma.