Author: Bob Goodwin

Problems Reported on First Day of TNReady Testing

Bob Goodwin

After months of preparing for the annual year-end assessments, many Tennessee students struggled to log on to the TNReady testing platform Monday morning. The Department of Education says the problem was quickly fixed by the vendor, and over 20,000 students took the test after the problems were resolved. “We share the frustration that some students had challenges logging into Nextera this morning. Questar has fixed this issue, and thousands of students are on the platform now. Over 25,000 students have successfully completed TNReady tests as of this point today,” the Department of Education tweeted. “No server has crashed, and the issue was not statewide. This issue was not related to volume. Testing has resumed.” Some districts saw the early errors as a warning of what was to come and chose to cancel testing for the day. “In Williamson, most of our 5-11 students could not log in,” said Jason Golden, Deputy Superintendent of Williamson County Schools. “Williamson County Schools early reports indicate that those who did get logged in apparently finished the test, but we can’t measure the distractions they were dealing with in each classroom as other students couldn’t get logged in. We shut it down for the day & are…

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Further Testing Issues Show Implementation Problems at Tennessee’s Department of Education

Bob Goodwin
McQueen

After three years and little success, the Tennessee Department of Education remains riddled with problems implementing statewide online testing platforms, TNReady. According to an email blast from Chief Information Officer for the Tennessee Department of Education Cliff Lloyd on March 6, the state’s online testing platform experienced more technical difficulties this week. “The problem was related to a rogue process that was running in the data center where NextEra is hosted,” Lloyd said. “The problem was identified relatively quickly and the process was shut down, but unfortunately it did negatively impact about fifteen districts.” The email blast was sent to educators across the state as they tried to log into their state-mandated testing platform, but it wasn’t these teachers’ first report of problems from the department; in fact, it wasn’t even their first update this week. “Yesterday I wrote to you and explained the diagnosis and remediation of a problem in the NextEra testing platform that made logging on to the system difficult,” Lloyd wrote earlier in the email. “While that problem is now solved, unfortunately we encountered another problem today.” From the original vendor failing to create a functioning testing platform to thousands of tests being incorrectly scored to…

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Tennessee General Assembly Inaction Raises Questions About Legal Authority of State Textbook Commission Actions

Bob Goodwin

The commission that will be recommending new social studies textbooks for Tennessee students is operating with a majority of its members unconfirmed by the legislature or still serving after their terms have expired. The 10-member Tennessee State Textbook and Instructional Materials Quality Commission currently has only four positions that do not require immediate legislative action due to expired terms, two of them appointed by House Speaker Beth Harwell. Three other members who have not been approved by the General Assembly apparently voted in commission meetings last year. The Department of Education and the Governor’s office declined to comment on the current state of the commission. This year the commission is tasked with approving the state’s new social studies textbook with their next meeting set for March 19. The commission is comprised of three appointees each from the Governor, the Lt. Governor and the Speaker of the House which must be approved by the General Assembly, and one designee from the Commissioner of the Department of Education. Before Sen. Mike Bell (R-Cleveland) sponsored Senate Bill 1602 in 2014, the commission included the commissioner of education and nine members appointed by the governor. The change in appointing powers assumed the General Assembly…

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