SAN ANGELO, TX — Director of Communications, Derrick Jackson: “The STAAR testing online platform received a disruption to their server that was based out of their home office essentially. It was down for about 20 minutes, it was a statewide deal and it happened at about 11:15 AM on Tuesday morning, April 10th. “
Brenda Matute: Specific number of schools/students affected in SAISD?
Jackson: “16 of our campuses were impacted by the disruption it ended up being a total of about 200 kids. The good thing is we didn’t have anything lost once we submitted and came back up once the system was ready to go back online.”
Brenda: Were students test scores affected?
Jackson: “As it relates to scoring we really don’t have any way to predict how that’s going to impact. The Texas Education Agency who monitors the testing for us, they’re going to be the ones that let us know how the impact on scoring is going be felt.”
Brenda: How did the teachers/staff handle it?
Jackson: “Our campus testing coordinators contacted our district testing coordinator as soon as they realized there was a problem. Our district testing coordinators then contacted the state. We made sure that our campus coordinators were just patient and held on with anything they did, and once we got our response back from the state that’s when were able to let them know.”
Brenda: What did the students do during the time of the glitch?
Jackson: “We followed the main protocol, the students are not allowed to leave the testing. It was really just kind of like a pause and once that 20 minute window was over the students were able to continue back to what they were doing. In most cases they were pretty much wrapped up if not completely wrapped up. We just needed to make sure the submittal was received on the other end the way it was supposed to; and it was.”