In an email to administrators Tuesday, Texas Education Agency Executive Director Deborah Sauberer said the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness Online Platform experienced a "temporary server disruption" at around 11:15 a.m. this morning.
Sauberer said the issue—which involved students being logged out of the platform and unable to log back in—was resolved about 20 minutes later.
About 104,000 students were affected by the glitch, and some finished test sessions were displaying "N/A" for responses, according to Sauberer.
In a tweet to the TEA and TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, SMCISD superintendent Michael Cordona asked what the TEA had to say about the glitch.
"What excuses will be given because this has the potential to skew results and who gets harmed are students, parents and teachers," he wrote in the tweet.
@teainfo @MikeMorath What does TEA say now that statewide system for testing went down? What excuses will be given because this has the potential to skew results and who gets harmed are students, parents, and teachers. @SanMarcosCISD Stay tuned for call from Mr. Fernandez.
— Michael Cardona (@mcardona1989) April 10, 2018
The superintendent tweeted a second time shortly after, saying, "Inquiring minds want to know how this will affect students, teachers, and parents."
The Texas Tribune, Community Impact Newspaper's reporting partner, spoke with TEA spokesperson DeEtta Culbertson, who said it did not appear students lost any of their responses.
SMCISD Executive Communications Director Andrew Fernandez said when students began experiencing the glitch, teachers sent students to lunch, and when they came back to the tests the system was working again.
"We're told that no results were altered for us," he said, adding students were able to submit their completed tests with no issues. "To our knowledge, [the glitch] didn't affect us. That's the uncomfortable part of it."
Hays CISD Public Information Officer Tim Savoy said the administration was in the process of collecting the names of the students that were affected and would have the number of students who were affected Wednesday morning.
"Some students were affected and some were not. It was not across the board," Savoy said. "All students were eventually able to take their tests. The delay and problems logging in lasted about an hour today from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m."
Fernandez said the district will be calling parents of those students that were tested this evening to let them know about the glitch.
STAAR testing is scheduled to take place this week and again in May.
