On the same day thousands of Texas students experienced technical difficulties taking their STAAR exams online, a lawmaker suggested the state’s push to administer all of the exams virtually could take longer than expected.
About 200,000 Texas students were impacted by STAAR exam outages on Tuesday, Rep. Dan Huberty, R-Kingwood, told the House Public Education Committee. Students in districts across the state were kicked out of their exams and unable to log back in, resulting in some schools halting the tests for the day.
Officials at the Texas Education Agency have yet to respond to questions from The Dallas Morning News on how many students were impacted or the potential cause of the outages.
The state is in the middle of a push to administer all STAAR tests virtually. The Legislature started the process in 2019. Legislation required that the Texas Education Agency and State Board of Education draft a plan to get all kids testing online no later than the 2022-23 school year.
A bill by Huberty, who serves on the Public Education Committee, would create a grant program to help school districts transition to such online testing. But the Houston-area legislator acknowledged that the problems experienced by students this week underscored the need for more time.
“It is clear to me that we have some work to do as we go forward, and I want to give TEA the time to do that,” he said, noting that the agency felt “terribly” about the issues.
Huberty did not specify how long he believed it would take to get all students testing online.
Meanwhile, no statewide issues were reported as the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness tests continued on Wednesday.
Only a small number of Frisco students took a STAAR test online, and they did not report technical issues, according to district spokeswoman Meghan Cone. When possible, some campus officials had students take the test on paper as opposed to online.
“This is feasible at schools that have sufficient supplies of paper testing materials on hand,” Cone wrote in a statement. “Students who already started their test online will continue testing online to avoid having to transcribe answers that the student already recorded in the online system.”
Most of the Frisco students who had problems Tuesday will pick back up with the test on Thursday. These include fourth and seventh grade writing tests and high school English assessments.
Dallas ISD had no known issues with Wednesday’s online administration, said district spokesperson Robyn Harris. Campuses would decide when, in the five-week window, students disrupted by the outage would resume their exams.
Cedar Hill ISD said the district is on schedule to test Thursday.
The TEA’s Student Assessment Division reached out to testing coordinators Tuesday afternoon, notifying districts that online testing would resume Wednesday morning. For students who had their tests disrupted by the outage, they could resume their online exams, without losing answers or partial responses, at any time over the next five weeks.
Students who didn’t start their test could be moved to a paper test.
Online dictionaries used for the exams had been disabled for the foreseeable future, the message read, and the TEA would “continue to evaluate the effect of these technical difficulties and provide additional guidance, if needed.”
TEA issued a statement Tuesday acknowledging the technical difficulties across the state, calling the disruptions “completely unacceptable.” It noted that this is the last year the state will be working with its current testing vendor, New Jersey-based ETS.
“All involved in public education in Texas should expect better than what they have experienced today,” they wrote. “We are working to ensure that our students do not experience future testing issues.”
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The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.
The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from The Beck Group, Bobby and Lottye Lyle, The Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, The Meadows Foundation, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University and Todd A. Williams Family Foundation. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.
