State Testing Suspended In Oklahoma Schools Due To Computer Glitch

The state mandatory testing is suspended Monday at Oklahoma public schools. The problems are on a state-wide level after issues with servers at CTB/McGraw-Hill, the testing vendor.

According to the Oklahoma Department of Education, thousands of assessment tests were disrupted by the computer glitch, and the vendor for the testing site is looking into the cause.

Area school districts report while students were conducting the online test, the program would automatically log them out of their tests.

State Superintendent Janet Barresi has suspended testing for the day.

"We certainly share in the frustration that students and school districts feel," Barresi said.

"It is of paramount importance that CTB finds the nature of the problem and resolves it as quickly as possible."

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Teachers are being asked to have students attempt to finish any test already in progress, but not to start any additional testing until the issue is resolved.

CTB/McGraw-Hill says the outage only affected online testing for grades 6-8 and end-of-instruction assessments for high school students. While the outage is affecting students statewide, it is not affecting all sites. McGraw-Hill reported 8,100 disruptions statewide, while 11,000 students were able to complete their tests.

Third-grade reading tests were not affected as those are done with pencil and paper, according to the State Department of Education.

The Education Department is considering all options, though, including switching to pencil and paper testing. Meanwhile, the president of the company is coming to Oklahoma while its engineers continue working to isolate and resolve the problem.