School Districts Try to Resolve Technical Glitch in STAAR Test

EAST TEXAS (Staff/AP) — Administrators in East Texas are among those trying to determine whether some students taking an online standardized test lost answers in a computer glitch. KETK reports Tyler, Longview, Lufkin, and Nacogdoches are just some of the districts that experienced problems during the online portion of the STAAR test Tuesday. Representatives with Tyler ISD say they experienced just a simple backlogging issue but that tech officials were able to work through it.

TEA says the vendor, Educational Testing Service, is working to determine what went wrong Tuesday. Officials with ETS, in its first year of handling most of STAAR, believe its computer server saved the answers. The TEA is trying to figure out how many districts were affected. Students must pass the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness to graduate from high school. More exams were scheduled for Thursday, but the TEA said in a statement Wednesday that students unable to complete an online test because of the glitch will not be required to complete the test. The statement says TEA will leave it up to school district officials as to whether or not they want students to make up the exams that weren’t submitted Tuesday based on the technical glitch.