Oregon student assessment computer service down
I don’t know how your school does it, but here in Oregon we rely on a computer-based system to assess our students. Technology-Enhanced Student Assessment (TESA) has been in place since 2001, and up until now it’s been a reliable, stable system to use for that purpose. Like I said, though, that’s been up until now.
For the past week or so, we’ve had daily, somtimes hourly, e-mail updates that have indicated the system’s on-again, off-again status. We’re supposed to be testing our kids next week. Thursday, the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) is saying that it is down “until further notice.” Our own local coordinators decided to postpone testing at all next week, regardless of whether or not TESA was going to be available. That’s a good call. It’s better in the long run to let this run the course and let them get whatever glitches figured out. I would hate to see any of our kids get halfway through a test, and have the system go down with no database back-up in place. However, this Eugene Register-Guard article is reporting that ODE has indicated that TESA will be available on Monday. We’ll have to wait and see.
And, it may not be just a software glitch that is causing the problems. Apparently, the vendor that is contracted to run TESA, Vantage from Pennsylvania, has not been contracted to do the work next year. These problems could not come at a more inconvenient time. Most schools I know are planning on testing this week, and only have until the end of May to do so.
TESA has been an important way of assessing our students for the past few years. Let’s just hope that this is a blip on the radar screen and not a preview of things to come.
