EVANSVILLE— The Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction issued a statementTuesday afternoon instructing the Department of Education to suspend ISTEP-Plus testing for the remainder of the day due to "system errors".
“I am greatly disappointed to learn that Indiana schools had their ISTEP+ testing interrupted for a second consecutive day,” said Glenda Ritz, who is in her first year in the position. “Like all Hoosier parents, students and teachers, I find these interruptions frustrating and unacceptable.
CBT/McGraw-Hill, the company responsible for administering the test, had originally urged the test be held off until 11:30 a.m. CDT Tuesday. The company posted a message on its website after it had received "an increased incidence of interruptions." Ritz ordered the shutdown to prevent any further problems Tuesday.
Ritz said the company has plans to have the test ready tomorrow. The Department has plans of its own to conduct a review and determine the direct cause of the testing problems. Trouble began when students attempted to access the online portion of the standardized exam
Ritz said about 150,000 test sessions were completed by 11 a.m. but that interruptions spiked a short time later.
Indianapolis Public Schools spokesman John Althardt said the problems were discouraging.
"There is so much buildup and expectation and anticipation about what the test means that any disruptions in the schedule and rhythm of testing for our students is frustrating for us," he said. "We feel we've done our best to prepare our students and schools and then when we're unable to conduct this testing, it's a source of frustration."
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.
Carol Stream, Ill.-based McGraw-Hill administers the exam under a four-year, $95 million contract with the Indiana Department of Education. The contract runs 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.
Greg DeWeese, principal of Marrs Elementary School in Mount Vernon, Ind., said the first round of testing was completed and went smooth this morning, however students were not able to log into the system for the second round of testing. DeWeese said students were getting the same error messages they received Monday.
"Luckily, we did not start testing in round two before the outage," he said.
The Indiana General Assembly created the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress in 1987 as a No Child Left Behind test supporting standards-based education reform.