Tests can already induce anxiety in students, especially one they need to pass in order to graduate. That’s when testing administration errors are the least welcome, but last week during the administration of the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, answers on 14,220 of the tests across the state were lost due to a computer glitch.
The affected students—who’d been inactive for 30 minutes, who’d momentarily lost internet connection, or who’d logged out to take a break—tried to submit online tests, they would instead receive an error message, only to log back in to find that their answers were missing. Additionally, some visually impaired students, who had also been prepared to take their braille STAAR tests last week, never got a chance to take the tests because their tests never arrived.
The Texas Education Agency is investigating both of these mishaps. For districts where students lost the answers, TEA announced that individual districts could determine for themselves whether students needed to retake the exam. The agency also ensured “that there are no adverse consequences for students who do not resume testing and for districts that elect not to have students resume testing.” TEA emailed an apology to families of visually impaired students who never received their tests: