Students take online Common Core test with minimal interruptions

Laurie Udesky/EdSource Today

Students taking Smarter Counterbalanced practice tests at Bayshore Elementary School in Daly Metropolis.

Laurie Udesky/EdSource Today

Students taking Smarter Balanced practice tests at Bayshore Elementary Schoolhouse in Daly Urban center.

Subsequently the land invested about $27 million since Jan to help schools shore up their Internet connections, millions of students take been able to take new online assessments aligned with the Mutual Cadre State Standards this spring with minimal technical interruptions.

That's according to the California Department of Education. Officials in six school districts and a charter schoolhouse arrangement EdSource has been tracking as they implement the new standards said they have had very few interruptions in testing of any kind.

Past the time schools close for the summertime, an estimated 3.2​ ​million 3​r​d- through 8th-graders and 11th-graders will have taken tests in English arts and math known every bit the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP.

Among the school districts and the lease school organization EdSource is tracking  – Elk Grove, San Jose, Fresno, Visalia, Garden Grove and Santa Ana unified, and Aspire Public Schools – technology and testing managers said at that place have been no major technology bug.

However, districts accept reported some minor glitches.

Bug have ranged from students not being able to log in to the computerized tests toexamination-takers accidentally submitting assessments before they were finished. There have too been delays in students being able to take tests because of programming issues, such equally school officials entering into the testing organization a wrong pupil proper name, ID number or other information.

In those cases, districts can submit appeals to the California Section of Educational activity so students can go along taking or retake the tests.

"For the most part it's the normal footling things that happen with engineering, and teachers have been very good at getting through the tests," said Chris Ash, managing director of evaluation and research at Garden Grove Unified.

The Visalia Unified School District, for case, has filed just a couple of appeals, said Phil Black, the district'south director of assessments. One was to permit a pupil to restart his test, as he had begun it on a version of a computer programme that was incompatible with the testing organization. Some other was an appeal to allow a pupil whose examination session window had closed to finish his test. Once students get-go taking a test, they can accept breaks, and they accept 10 days to complete it, he said.

Compared to last year, when California conducted its start run of the assessments prepared by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, which was an unscored field examination, Blackness said this run had much fewer issues. "It'due south like night and day," he said.

Black attributed the substantial difference betwixt this year and last to the district's $42 meg investment in Chromebook computers and updating Cyberspace connections in the district'due south older schools.

In Aspire Public Schools, which runs 36 charter schools in California, Assessment Managing director Volition Georges saidin that location accept been a number of cases where students inadvertently submitted tests they had not finished, and teachers had to file appeals to get the tests reopened.He said Aspire schools have filedthree appeals, merely he said he's received about 10 calls from teachers in the by few weeks about the "text-to-speech" function, which reads text aloud, not working for students with disabilities. The problem for three of those students, he said, was tied to wrong information about them that had been entered into the system.

Co-ordinate to Georges, information technology takes up to 48 hours for the operating system to right the mistakes after they accept been reprogrammed, causing a delay for those students taking the cess.

Cindy Kazanis, the director of the Educational Data Direction Sectionalization at the Department of Education, acknowledged that there's "a bit of lag fourth dimension" in correcting information. She said the delay was an indication of a lack of familiarity with the system among some school staff who entered the information incorrectly in the first identify. But she did non think it was a major trouble.

Kazanis also discussed a statewide slowdown in the testing that occurred on April 30 during a busy testing time in the morning, making it hard for students to log in. About 250,000 students were taking the test that twenty-four hours, Kazanis said. The slowdown was due to a scheduled software update of accommodations intended to enable students with disabilities to take the examination. Kazanis explained that the software update could simply be activated when students logged in to the test. Every bit a effect, also many updates occurred at the aforementioned time. Kazanis said the department should not have scheduled the update during "peak testing time."

Students with disabilities have also had to argue with other technical glitches. Students who are using iPads to take their assessments, for example, may observe that the computerized "text-to-oral communication" office reads text to them at too rapid a footstep to follow, according to a "known issues log" on California's testing website. The log documents statewide technical problems with the assessments, suggests how to work around the issues until they're resolved, and notes when they accept been fixed in the system.

Since there is no way to slow downwardly the pace on an iPad, according to the log, schools are advised to test students on other devices. In that location are other technical problems for test-takers using iPads, according to the log. If an iPad has an operating system of IOS eight or newer, a student can be logged off the test if using the "Tab" key to navigate or format text.

Fresno Unified has had a few minor glitches that have been resolved pretty rapidly, according to Dave Calhoun, managing director of research and assessment. Some involved problems logging in to the test or the examination session shutting off before a student finished.

Chris Ash, managing director of evaluation and research at Garden Grove Unified, said his schools' testing has been running smoothly.

"Mostly information technology comes downward to a pupil typing an (ID) number wrong; every so oftentimes in that location's a reckoner freeze," he said. "For the well-nigh part it's the normal lilliputian things that happen with technology, and teachers take been very good at getting through the tests."

The April thirty slowdown interrupted testing in Garden Grove Unified, Ash said. Some schools had to reschedule their testing for some other twenty-four hours, but he said it was a "minor inconvenience."

Just Dave Haglund, the deputy superintendent of educational services for Santa Ana Unified, sees the April 30 slowdown differently.

"That'southward i incident of reanimation but information technology has an bear on on cess scores," Haglund said. "My business is if students and teachers don't perceive this to be a reliable testing surround, they may non approach the cess with every bit much seriousness."

Last year about 304 schools, representing less than three percent of the state's public schools, had significant broadband Internet connection problems.

The connectivity issues fabricated information technology hard for those schools to give the field exam last year without closing down all other computers, testing fewer students at a time, or busing students to a different location to take the assessments, according to the K-12 High Speed Network, a country programme that monitors broadband problems among the majority of California's G-12 public schools.

In January, the K-12 High Speed Network disbursed a $26.7 meg grant that the Legislature had gear up aside to help those schools most in need of broadband infrastructure improvements to run this year'due south assessments. Only 64 schools withal lack broadband connections for testing, said the network's CEO, Luis Alejandro Wong.

And Wong said that testing has not overloaded broadband chapters. Fifty-fifty though California is in the thick of testing students, only 20 percentage of the broadband available to the majority of the state's Thou-12 public schools has been tapped. "If you lot think of broadband like a superhighway, it's like only two lanes of a 10-lane superhighway are in employ," he said.

Stephen Mate, the managing director of technology services for Elk Grove Unified, said that out of 109,412 tests taken, he has filed a dozen appeals on behalf of students, which he expects to be answered in a few days. With the close of testing a couple of weeks away, he'south slightly reticent to brand pronouncements. "I'thousand kind of superstitious," he said. "Merely I think we're on solid ground."

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Source: https://edsource.org/2015/students-take-online-common-core-test-with-minimal-interruptions/80312