Students taking the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests, or MCAs, reported last week that they would often sit down at a computer to take the test and have to wait several minutes for questions to load, Minnesota Public Radio reports.
The company that delivers the tests to students’ computers, The American Institutes for Research (AIR), resolved the problem last week, only to receive reports again this week that the problem didn’t go away. The company faces fines as a result.
Students, on the other hand, face frustration in taking the test, which, many have argued, will negatively affect their scores.
“High stakes testing produces anxiety in and of itself. And this kind of uncertainty creates understandable consternation among students, among teachers, among families,” Charlene Briner, chief of staff at the Minnesota Department of Education, was quoted as saying. “It is not a good situation.”
More problems coming with testing consortia
AIR has been awarded the contract to deliver online tests for states in the Smarter Balanced Consortium. There are about two dozen of those, and compared to the number of students taking the test in Minnesota, the number that will be required to take the test with the Smarter Balanced Consortium will be much greater.
Education giant Pearson stands all but ready to sign on the dotted line when it comes to the test delivery contract from the other consortium, known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC).
Unlike AIR, Pearson uses an online test delivery system that caches copies of the tests on local machines. AIR’s test delivery system appears to have each student getting a copy of every question from central servers. It looks like we need a lesson in capacity planning before we subject kids in a couple dozen states to this kind of frustration.
Clearly, caching a copy of the test on a local machine, which would make it unnecessary to hit a central server every time students load the next question on their screen, is the way to go.
The three-year test delivery contract AIR has with Minnesota, valued at $61 million, runs through 2014, after which Smarter Balanced and PARCC assessments are expected to be ready.
Although the online delivery of tests allows more creativity in the items—students can manipulate elements on the screen, such as focusing a microscope—whether or not they are actually more engaged in the test remains to be seen.
And with online test delivery, one glitch can frustrate not just a roomful of students, as when a proctor hands out the wrong answer sheets or something, but several millions of students who might be taking a test at any given moment.
