Kansas education officials encouraged by progress of state assessments

Kansas education officials said statewide testing is going more smoothly after weeks of technical glitches, but some local districts are still reporting problems and suspending widespread testing.

About halfway through the annual testing window for assessments in math, reading and science, “we’re encouraged with the volume of completed test sections and tests,” Brad Neuenswander, deputy education commissioner, said Thursday.

“The last few days have been record days in terms of the number of tests completed.”

Statewide, about 170,000 of an estimated 600,000 tests had been completed by Wednesday, said Marianne Perie, director of the University of Kansas’ Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation. About 274,000 tests had been started, meaning at least one section of the test was completed, she said.

“So we’re rocking and rolling in terms of the kids just jumping on and doing assessments,” Perie said.

The state’s online testing interface – the Kansas Interactive Testing Engine, or KITE – was the victim of cyberattacks earlier this month, which prompted increased security measures that further slowed down the system and prevented some students from logging on, Perie said.

“We’re trying to find that balance between loosening the net enough that good traffic gets in but tightening it enough to keep the bad traffic out,” she said.

“I’ll be the first to say KITE is not where it needs to be and certainly hasn’t been where it needs to be the first five weeks of testing,” she said. “The next three or four days will tell us if KITE’s where it needs to be now.”

School districts across the state have been reporting technical problems with the rollout of new state assessment tests, which began March 10. This year’s tests are browser-based, meaning students must be logged into the state site to take them. In past years, test directors downloaded the tests onto school computers, and students completed them offline.

State education officials have said it’s not a problem if some students don’t complete this year’s tests, which are being viewed as a trial run for the tests and the system.

Test developers said they plan to analyze results and give districts some feedback and data. But they may not report school-specific data as in past years because this year’s trial-run test, with all its stops and starts and technical glitches, may not truly reflect how much students have learned.

“We are going to err on the side of not releasing information that’s at all questionable,” Perie said. “We’ve got to figure out a way that provides some diagnostic information back to schools but is fair to everybody.”

Neuenswander, the deputy commissioner, added, “Not only are we not going to make judgments off of it, there is the possibility that we just don’t even report anything because we don’t want other people trying to make inferences.”

Wichita and several surrounding districts said they have suspended widespread testing until they can be sure the state interface is working smoothly.

Maize superintendent Doug Powers said it will be April 21 at the earliest before students there take the state tests. In the meantime, teachers will administer other assessments such as AimsWeb and the Northwest Evaluation Association’s Measures of Academic Progress, which they use to track students’ progress.

“Those assessments are probably more valuable to us than the state assessment because it gives us actual data we can use,” Powers said. “We’re going to go on with those and … not push our stuff back two or three weeks.”

Lisa Lutz, director of innovation and evaluation for the Wichita district, said Wichita schools continue to field test state assessments. But now teachers are having one or two students try instead of whole classes.

“We’re getting blank screens, white screens that freeze and won’t let you move up or down, test answers not showing up” on the screen, Lutz said. “We have suspended it for the most part until further notice, until they can get some of the issues worked out.”

Perie said she’s confident this year’s trial run will enable the state to be ready next spring, when a more complete test that is fully aligned to Common Core state standards will go into effect to meet a federal requirement.

“We’re already starting development for next year, and one of the things we’ll do is make sure we have practice tests online early in the school year,” she said. “We’re hoping to do that through the year so there will be no question by the time we hit the summative testing window that KITE’s ready.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2014 at 8:44 PM with the headline "Kansas education officials encouraged by progress of state assessments."