In what is sure to be surprising news to parents, students, and school district leaders, TNReady quick score results are delayed yet again. Hard to predict this type of disaster since it only happens every year for the past four years now.
This delay is due to a problem the vendor is having with new test scanning equipment.
Here’s a statement from Hamilton County Schools explaining the news they received from the Tennessee Department of Education:
Tennessee Education Commissioner Dr. Candice McQueen informed school directors state-wide today that TNReady assessment vendor Questar has experienced challenges with the scanning software and capacity to scan testing materials; therefore, the company will not be able to meet the raw score deadlines set.
Dr. McQueen has asked Questar for updates on district-specific timing, and says the company currently estimates the scores will be delivered for the state’s upload process no later than the week of June 12.
Questar released a statement, which I have attached to this email.
The message from Dr. McQueen says she plans to meet with several groups this summer, including the TOSS Board, to come up with solutions that may prevent Tennessee testing vendors from missing the deadline set for report cards for a third year in a row. Her office promises to keep districts posted as the state receives more information.
To their credit, Questar is taking responsibility. That’s a change in tone from previous testing vendor Measurement, Inc.
Here’s what Questar had to say:
A Statement from Questar Regarding Raw Score Delivery
Questar committed to spring TNReady raw score delivery on a timeline and terms we set and which were communicated extensively by the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE), however, our company has experienced scan set-up difficulties that will affect that timeline. Questar recently completed an upgrade to our scanning programs for paper tests, and we underestimated the time needed to fully integrate these upgrades. Therefore, any delays to the timeline are not the fault of the Tennessee Department of Education or the districts across the state. We take complete responsibility for this project, and we are actively working to meet our commitments to the state, districts, and educators. The purpose of this communication is to provide an update on the progress we are making to publish raw scores for grades 3-8 and End-of-Course assessments.
End-of-Course Status Update: Nearly all paper and online EOC raw scores are uploaded to EdTools. We appreciate the communication from the TDOE to reprioritize EOC delivery to ensure districts had these results as soon as possible.
3-8 Status Update: Questar is currently working through delays in scan processing for the 3-8 raw scores, which impact the timeline we previously provided to the TDOE for raw score delivery. We have experienced several software delays with our scan programming that we are actively resolving, and we are working to increase capacity within our scanning operations. We are committed to working with TDOE to mitigate these challenges in order to scan and score TNReady 3-8 assessments as quickly as possible. We will provide additional details and timelines, including district-specific estimations, as we make progress over the week.
The raw score delays will not impact the timeline for delivery of final score reports. Our scoring operations are unaffected by the scanning software issues, and we anticipate providing EOC final score reports this summer and 3-8 score reports this fall after the cut score process is complete, as previously announced.
We understand the importance of having the raw scores to communicate information to educators, students, and families, and we apologize for the inconvenience our delays have caused TDOE and our district partners in getting this information on the timeline we committed to months ago.
Questar sincerely appreciates our partnership with TDOE and the Tennessee educators and students we serve.
Tennessee has unique timing requirements for raw score delivery as compared to other states so we will continue to work with the department and districts to ensure that the future score return process is successful.
-Brad Baumgartner, Chief Partner Officer
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Trouble is, no one in the legislature is likely to vote to take students’ skin out of the game (the game really being to hold teachers’ feet to the fire). And if they do vote to eliminate raw scores as part of grades they will soon after have to admit that there’s not a mathematically valid way for teachers to have skin in the game either. So we will probably be stuck with this system wherein we test weeks and weeks before the end of the year, losing obstruction time (this will be true until 1-2 years after computer testing gets wrangled under control). No one on the state office will admit that we have cheapo untested vendors and do they are likely to push the testing another week even earlier next year just to avoid having to avoid the raw score problem they are having this year. Sigh.
Is there any update to this saga? I was expecting to receive my child’s TNReady test scores over the summer or the first day of this new school year. When I didn’t receive them, I contacted our principal and found out our school district doesn’t even have the scores yet, STILL.
You don’t have quick scores? The full scores are not expected until later in the year – November, I believe.
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