The Texas Education Agency directed Educational Testing Service to spend more than $20 million in fines and investments after more than 14,000 students—including about 70 in Humble ISD—lost answers on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness in March.
ETS was fined $5.7 million in liquidated damages and directed to invest $15 million in online testing system enrollment, shipping, online testing, precoding and scoring and reporting in August, according to the TEA.
The 2015-16 school year was the first year the New Jersey-based vendor administrated the STAAR test.
“ETS apologizes for operational shortcomings during this year’s STAAR program,” ETS spokesperson Christine Betaneli said. “Our most important goal is to deliver the high-quality program the students and educators of Texas deserve, and we will continue to improve programs and processes to achieve that objective.”
The tests lost during the 2015-16 school year mainly affected students who needed accommodations, such as those in Special Education or English Language Learners. However, some high school students were affected because districts were afforded the opportunity to test completely online for English I and II end-of-course exams, TEA spokesperson Lauren Callahan said.
After about 70 students experienced problems with the online tests last school year, HISD did not require students to retest if ETS was unable to resolve the problem that day, Director of Public Communications Jamie Mount said.
“Humble ISD faced numerous challenges related to state testing,” Mount said. “District officials had to be in frequent communication with ETS and TEA throughout the spring and summer. It was not a smooth, turn-key process and required much greater oversight by Humble ISD administrators than in prior years.”
ETS was awarded a four-year contract for the administration of STAAR tests for grades 3–8 and high school STAAR End-of-Course exams in 2015. Callahan said the vendor would continue administering the test for the foreseeable future, and no decisions have been made to replace ETS as the test administrator.
