HOUSTON — Multiple school districts statewide are having trouble administering the STAAR exam on Tuesday due to an online service outage.
Note: the video in this story is about STAAR testing and changes in place for this year
Some districts sent an email to parents and others posted to social media informing the public about the problems with the online system.
Houston ISD confirmed it was also being impacted, and according to officials, students who lost connectivity were instructed to stop testing. Meanwhile, the district said students who were unaffected were allowed to continue testing.
The district said all paper-based STAAR testing continued as normal.
They released the following statement:
"HISD has been made aware by the Texas Education Agency that they are encountering technical difficulties that are impacting the 2021 State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR®) online administrations. HISD, along with school districts statewide, are experiencing connectivity issues with the STAAR Online Testing Platform (SOTP). As a result, HISD students who were testing online and faced connectivity or technical issues accessing the test, were informed to stop testing. However, HISD students who were able to access the test with no technical issues were informed to continue testing. All paper-based testing administration continued as normal."
Other district school officials also said campuses will be in touch with parents once the TEA determines whether students will be able to continue with online testing.
"Texas Education Agency has informed us of a statewide outage in the online administration of the STAAR exams today. Some of our online test takers have been affected, others have not. We will provide updated information as it becomes available," Spring Branch ISD tweeted.
This school year, the STAAR tests are being administered on paper, online or a combination of the two.
"The District is waiting on guidance from the Texas Education Agency on how these students will make up their test and will share that information. Please note, this is a statewide issue, and is not specific to our District," tweeted Fort Bend ISD.
In a statement, the Texas Education Agency’s Student Assessment Division writes, “we understand the frustration this has caused students, parents, teachers, and administrators. What happened today is completely unacceptable.”
Galveston ISD, one of the hundreds of school districts impacted by the outage, confirms 1,200 students in either fourth, seventh grade or in high school were slated to take the STAAR test in either writing or English Tuesday. GISD reports 548 students will have to retake the test, as early as Wednesday.
“We planned for this. We had laptops for each of our students,” said Billy Rudolph, who leads Galveston ISD’s Communications Department. Rudolph explained how the district worked for months to make sure students were ‘tech ready’ for the STAAR. After no standardized testing last school year because of the pandemic, Rudolph said that the TEA, “wanted everybody to go ahead and take the STARR test this year. We’re fully compliant with that. They wanted everyone to take it in person. We were fully compliant with that.”
Schools that administered paper tests had no issues, but campuses that went with the online option were in trouble by 9 a.m.
“We had reports that a lot of our students were losing connectivity, not being able to log in, not being able to get to the test at all.”
In the same statement, the TEA confirmed its testing vendor, ETS, “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.”
“We were totally prepared to be able to administer the test online while in the classroom,” said Rudolph. “So we were ready on our end and I think a lot of school districts across the state did a lot of plans to get ready, so it’s very unfortunate that we have to reset and try to do it all again.”
Statement from TEA Student Assessment Division:
“Earlier today, districts experienced connectivity issues with the STAAR Online Testing Platform (SOTP). We posted updates to the STAAR Assessment Management System dashboard every 10 minutes to keep districts apprised of the progress in resolving the issue.
“The three STAAR tests affected were Grade 4 writing, Grade 7 writing, and English I. This was the first of five days that students were eligible to take one of these three tests online.
“At 10:17 a.m. CDT today, districts were advised if they were having issues that they should stop online testing for the day while the vendor works to resolve these problems. Online testing will resume tomorrow.
“We are still analyzing data to determine the number of students affected. Students could have experienced four different scenarios with online testing today:
1) the student could have successfully submitted the test without disruption;
2) the student could have successfully submitted answers but may have noticed unusually slow response times;
3) the student could have been prevented from logging in to begin with; or
4) the student could have begun to answer questions, but at some point was prevented from continuing, and in this instance, answers were saved every thirty seconds so that these students will be able to pick up where they left off.
“We understand the frustration this has caused students, parents, teachers, and administrators. What happened today is completely unacceptable. ETS, 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.
“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.”
WFAA contributed to this report