After days of issues with state TNReady testing, state lawmakers want to make sure the results don't penalize the students or the schools.
Students started taking the online standardized tests on Monday, but thousands of students couldn't log into the system. Problems persisted on Tuesday, when Tennessee education officials said the company handling the online portion of the TNReady test "may have experienced a deliberate attack."
"It’s frustrating. There’s no easy way to say it other than it’s absolutely frustrating that we continue to have different problem after different problem after different problem," said state Rep. Eddie Smith, of Knoxville. "We really just needed to say, you know what, we want to know and continue with the online testing because we need to know, what are we going to do to fix it in the future, but in the meantime, we’ve got to protect our students, teachers and schools and hold all of them harmless."
Smith introduced legislation Thursday to stop the TNReady tests from counting against students, teachers and schools after days of technical difficulties.
The state extended the deadline for schools to complete the testing because of the issues, but the results may not matter after lawmakers stepped in on Thursday.
The measure agreed upon by both chambers says test results this school year will only count if it benefits students, educators and districts. Districts also can’t base employment or compensation decisions based on the data, the legislation says.
The legislation specifies:
- Each local board of education may choose the percentage within the range of zero percent (0%) to fifteen percent (15%) that scores from the TNReady assessments administered in the 2017-2018 school year shall count on a student's final grade for the spring semester
- Student performance and student growth data from the TNReady assessments administered in the 2017-2018 school year shall not be used to assign a letter grade to a school pursuant to this section or identify a school as a priority school
- Schools shall not base employment termination and compensation decisions for teachers on data generated by statewide assessments administered in the 2017-2018 school year.
Knox County Schools Superintendent Bob Thomas hopes the Board of Education votes to not count the tests.
"The distractions that we’ve had and the stress that has been involved in the testing, my personal opinion would be it would be really great to probably not to count this year until the state can get things in order so it can happen in the manner intended," Thomas said.
In Knox County, Board of Education members will likely take up the issue at their end-of-month work session on April 30.
Some schools experienced a brief slow down in testing Thursday, but there were no major technology issues. 250,000 kids completed the tests today across the state. In Knox County, 10,000 kids at 31 schools participated.
"It was clear many members of the General Assembly wanted to address concerns related to the recent administration of state assessments," Sara Gast, a spokesperson for the state Department of Education, said in a statement. "The governor and Commissioner McQueen understand these concerns and did not oppose the legislation. We will fully support the implementation of the new law."
Troubled history
TNReady testing stability has been a key issue due to past technical issues that caused the state to switch testing vendors and some lawmakers to question their own confidence in TNReady testing on the whole.
In February 2016, the TDOE halted the online portion of the TNReady test because the vendor at the time could not meet bandwidth demands and tried to switch to paper tests. The problems snowballed as the vendor missed repeated deadlines to provide almost 10 million paper versions to the state’s 146 school districts, forcing the state to cancel testing that year as well as their contract with the vendor.
The issue was chalked up to inexperience, among other issues, with the test assessment company Measurement Inc. and their Secure Testing system to administer tests on a state-wide scale.
The state Department of Education named Minnesota-based Questar Assessment its new vendor for the standardized TNReady test later in 2016.
This is the final year the state has a contract with the testing vendor Questar. Next year, lawmakers will reevaluate which vendor will administer the tests.