I Love Technology

But, I'll tell you--technology is not loving our school district this week. This is the week we've been anticipating since the first day of school. Notice I didn't say "looking forward to," or "excited for," it's just the week we knew was on the calendar and we'd have to be prepared.  It's High Stakes Testing Time, here in the desert, and all over the country.

This year, we got a new kind of test. It's all to be done on the computer. The first part of the math testing was scheduled for us on Monday. It is a CAT--computer adaptive test. The theory is that students will get easier, or more difficult questions after they answer a few of the questions, depending on their skill level. The point is not to frustrate the student, but to adjust the level of questioning to evaluate the advancement of their understanding. It's a pretty good idea. The second part of the math testing is a "performance task" --wherein the students would be asked to do multiple tasks in the context of a simulated activity that requires multiple types of math skills, just like real life.

So, anyway, we were scheduled to start on Monday, and then do part two on Tuesday. We've prepped them by having a Saturday Camp one morning last month, and by having the students use the computers in the classroom to do practice tasks. These tests have drop-down menus to use highlighting, calculators, take notes, drop-and-drag functions. It's quite advanced, technologically, and we've tried to give our fourth graders as much opportunity to be familiar with using computer tools as we could. It's the first year we've used an all-computer test, and we really want them to be comfortable with the nuts and bolts. We want all their thinking capacity to be available for the math parts.

Well....speaking of capacity...As we got all of our students logged in, signed up, and I clicked on my computer to accept their log-ins and allow them to access the test, we experienced a large number of failures. Screens just showed us the "circle of death" and other people's screens simply kicked them off. It didn't work. Part of our fourth graders were able to log in and complete the first part of the test. Part of them couldn't.

On Tuesday, it got even worse. We taught a lesson to our students to help them understand the vocabulary that would be used in their performance tests, and then we headed to the computer labs for the real deal. Again, "loading"....until, after 45 minutes, we received the word from the principal that it wasn't just us. No one in the entire district could log into the test site. In fact, the entire state was crashed. No testing today.

So now it is Thursday. Each morning, I've arrived at school and the principal has handed me my secure testing bin and the passwords for the day. Each morning, approximately 30 minutes later, we get the message from her that testing is cancelled for today because the servers at the testing site are crashed.

We have scheduled 3rd, 4th and 5th grade to take their tests over a three week period. But...this week is mostly a bust. So, I do not know what we will do. These are federally mandated tests. I imagine if it comes down to it, that we might qualify for a waiver in our state, if the company who designed, and sold us the tests cannot make it work.

I've been astonished at this. Really? You couldn't have figured out in advance how much server capacity was going to be needed? You didn't realized that thousands of students would all be logging in at the same time? I DO love technology. But this is pretty crazy. Stay tuned...