A standardized test for students across Alaska was delayed this week when a Kansas construction accident disrupted Internet service to the firm handling the testing results.
Elizabeth Davis, administrator for standards and assessments at the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, said Wednesday that word of the outage first came in Tuesday morning as districts were conducting the Alaska Measures of Progress exam. The controversial test, in its second year of use in grades three through 10, is slated to be replaced by another test for the 2016-17 school year.
"We got a few calls from districts saying kids were not able to log in, or they were not able to get into the teacher site for testing," Davis said.
Davis called the Achievement and Assessment Institute, the firm operating out of the University of Kansas that coordinates the AMP results, and learned that a construction accident had occurred near campus. A piece of equipment had severed the fiber-optic cable serving the institute.
The institute also handles standardized testing in Kansas, as well as Dynamic Learning Map testing for students with severe disabilities in Alaska and 17 other states.
"No one was able to test yesterday," Davis said. "It wasn't just Alaska."
Anchorage School District spokeswoman Heidi Embley said all students in third and seventh grades, who have been in AMP testing this week, will be affected.
Repairs were being made Wednesday to the cut cable in Kansas, and Alaska officials planned to resume testing Thursday.
A five-week window is currently open in which to conduct AMP testing. Davis said individual school districts are taking their own approaches to handling the delay.
"Some of the districts have decided to just pick up where they left off on Thursday," Davis said. "Other districts are choosing to go forward with the schedule they've had -- kids who were scheduled to test on Thursday will test on Thursday, and kids who were scheduled to test on Tuesday or Wednesday will test later."
Although EED and district testing coordinators plan for contingencies that delay testing, Davis said the Kansas accident caused Alaska's first testing delay on a statewide scale.
"It was just crazy unexpected," Davis said. "It was like, 'Really -- a backhoe?' "
In Sitka, educators said work that students had already completed on the test should be recoverable, according to The Associated Press.