Now that the state has fired another assessment vendor, or to put it more kind
steps? How did the failures this past year impact teachers and students? Wha
In The Trouble With Testing, Executive Director
JC Bowman outlines the struggles Tennessee
has faced trying to implement a new set of
standards and accompanying assessment in
recent years. The problems began under the
contract with Measurement, Inc., a contract
the TN Department of Education terminated
the first year that online assessments were
attempted statewide. They selected another
vendor from the original RFP, Questar, with
high hopes for a smoother transition to an
online platform going forward.
WHAT HAPPENED
Successful trials of the online platform were
completed in the fall. About 1/3 of grades
5-8 classrooms across the state had opted
for online TNReady assessments this spring
and were ready to go on Day 1 of the testing
window - and from Day 1 there were problems.
It began with problems logging in to the
platform and submission errors when tests
were complete. Mid-week Questar announced
a suspected cyber attack (later determined
to have actually been an internal error), and
it was later discovered that unapproved
changes and maintenance to the platform
were launched by Questar before and during
Tennessee’s testing window, in violation of the
contract. Additionally, there was an incident
where a major fiber optic cable serving a large
portion of East Tennessee was damaged,
resulting in a lack of interent connectivity for
many districts.
Interruption in internet service on the part
of regional service providers is an inherent
risk of online testing platforms, but the
other issues were undeniably the fault of the
vendor’s poor execution and missteps. The
event that Questar initially contributed to a
“denial of service” attack has now been traced
to caching issues connected to the text-to-
speech feature configuration. The feature
had worked successfully during the previous
fall, however Questar staff implemented
a significant unauthorized change in the
meantime, resulting in numerous problems
during the spring administration window.
LEGISLATIVE RESPONSE
As a result, the TN General Assembly and
Department of Education once again scrambled
to design legislation that would effectively
hold teachers and students harmless for the
results of these errors. Since not every class
was affected and many teachers had worked
very hard to prepare their students to perform
well on the new assessment, teachers were
given the option of whether or not to include
the scores in their TVAAS metric.
2018 LEGISLATION: TNREADY
• PRESS RELEASE: TNReady Legislation
and Accountability (May 16, 2018)
• New Legislation FAQ from TNDOE
SB 1623/HB 1981 and SB 578/HB 75
• Detailed Teacher Evaluation Guidance
At the school accountability level, schools will
not be assigned an overall cummulative grade
and Priority Schools will not be determined
based on 2017-2018 data.
TNREADY: WH