The rollout of Common Core-centric standardized testing in Colorado was a disaster today, with numerous school districts reporting a range of problems and children spending hours in front of non-functioning computers.

Just a fraction of students were able to complete the testing, and questions about testing security and validity given the problems were endemic.

Lisa Escarcega, chief accountability and research officer for Aurora Public Schools, said in an e-mail the district has experienced challenges because the online Pearson system students log onto differs from the system for last fall’s Colorado-specific science and social studies tests, on another Pearson system. The process differs for student roster uploads, creating test sessions and starting sessions, she said.

“We knew the systems were different and trained using the practice site, but you don’t find out the intricacies of those differences until you are working within them,” she said. “It has been a steep learning curve, but we are working through these issues. We are working hard to make testing go as smoothly as possible for all our students.”

She added: “Aside from these issues and the amount of time schools are needing to spend on scheduling and rotating students in and out of computer labs or taking computers on carts around the schools, it is going OK here in Aurora.”

The Colorado Department of Education, which has steadfastly supported testing despite widespread criticism was focused on pro-testing message discipline. “Today was the second day of the early CMAS English language arts and math testing window for the first component of those PARCC-developed tests. In Colorado, some schools found that their computers had memory limits. Restarting the devices resolved the issue. There were also some browser configuration problems which were resolved. Colorado had about 130,000 students who tested today with nearly 26,000 students finishing all sessions to complete a test.

CMAS Performance-Based Component Administration Update – Day 2

The table below includes today’s statistics for Colorado.

Students Active Today: 130,800

Tests Started Today: 93,212

Tests Completed Today (requires all sessions to be completed): 25,740

Total of Test Completed (requires all sessions to be completed): 40,730

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