Students in Austin ISD and across the state of Texas were scheduled to participate in the first day of State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness testing April 6. However, a statewide technology outage has led testing to be canceled or delayed for many.

According to AISD, the Texas Education Agency has confirmed that its Educational Testing System that administers the STAAR test is currently experiencing a statewide outage.

While some AISD students have been able to access the platform and will continue to take their test on campus today, the first day of testing has been postponed for those who were not able to log on. The district will contact the parents and guardians of those students who were not able to participate and will provide details about when they may be able to take the test in the future.

“We will continue to provide updates as we receive them from state testing authorities,” the district wrote online.

According to a TEA news release, three STAAR tests were affected by the connectivity issues, including fourth grade writing, seventh grade writing and English I.


While the TEA Student Assessment Division is still analyzing data to determine the number of students who were affected, students could have experienced any of the following four scenarios during testing April 6:

  • the student could have successfully submitted the test without disruption;

  • the student could have successfully submitted answers but may have noticed unusually slow response times;

  • the student could have been prevented from logging in to begin with; or

  • the student could have begun to answer questions but at some point was prevented from continuing, and in this instance, answers were saved every 30 seconds so that these students will be able to pick up where they left off.