By Joseph Kim and JoyAnne Ibay

Originally published on May 22, 2015

Last time the problem was booting up laptops; this time it was a bad WiFi connection. English teacher Bryan Ritter stuck his head out the classroom door in frustration and waved down a test coordinator. It was day five, and his junior class was still taking the new state test on a new online program.

This situation is an example of the issues that arose with the administration of the new Smarter Balanced test: limited equipment, technical difficulties, scheduling conflicts, and lost instructional time.

The test, administered online for the first time this year by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), replaced the California Standardized Testing (CST) and is based on the new Common Core curriculum. Unlike CST testing, the SBAC testing must be completed online and is computer adaptive, meaning the questions change depending on student performance, allowing students to take the test at their own pace. Unlike the multiple-choice CST, the SBAC English test included a typed written essay and several typed short-answer questions.

“If we had enough computers, we would have tested all the juniors at the same time.”

Technical issues, the untimed nature of the test, and scheduling conflicts resulted in over four-weeks of test-taking when the test was planned to be taken for only three days. Some teachers began the SBAC test April 8, when the site was first open for testing. The administration scheduled a three-day special schedule with two-hour blocks, April 13 through April 15, when the majority of teachers did testing. The school’s testing was not officially completed until May 7, according to assistant principal of curriculum Holly Giles.

The number of laptops available for use during the testing played an important role in the scheduling of the test. For the 653 juniors taking the test, the District provided three carts with thirty Macbook Air laptops in each. This was insufficient in supplying a majority of the classes, which had more than 30 students. Because of this shortage, a number of laptops had to be transferred from one cart to another according to how many students there were in the class, according to Giles.

If the district supplied enough computers for each junior to take the SBAC test, a different schedule could have been created that would have all the juniors take the test simultaneously. “If we had enough computers, we would have tested all the juniors at the same time,” Giles said.

For each school this year, the district only supplied one computer to every 8–10 students taking the test, according to John Burke, supervisor at the district Assessments Office, which manages testing for the district. “A long term goal is to be able to give every student their own individual computer for the testing, but until then this is what we have,” Burke said.

According to Lowell Tech Committee Chair Bryan Marten, the SBAC testing is a “partially unfunded mandate” because the state requires students to take the test on computers, but the district did not supply enough funding for each student to have his or her own computer for the test.

The week before the testing began, the District IT looked into issues regarding the school’s WiFi, and after making some changes, “dramatically improved our WiFi network,” according to Marten.

The testing also proved to be a challenge technologically for numerous teachers, particularly in the English department, according to English teacher Jennifer Moffitt.

Despite updates to the WiFi, the English department experienced multiple issues connecting all students to the testing site, according to Moffitt. The English department administered the test using the three carts of thirty Macbook Airs in addition to the library computer lab. They also faced difficulties with network connectivity and computer crashing problems. “There were some issues with system settings that I never really understood and computers that crashed during the testing; at one point, even my testing administration computer crashed,” Moffitt said.

The shortage of Macbooks, in addition to their low reliability in booting up, took much of the allotted test-taking time, according to English teacher Bryan Ritter. “The first day I tried it, it took me about 35 minutes to get everyone on,” Ritter said. “It was a rough start because we didn’t have enough computers either physically in the room, or we didn’t have enough computers that actually worked.”

“A long term goal is to be able to give every student their own individual computer for the testing, but until then this is what we have.”

Despite the scheduling and proctoring issues teachers faced, the English department was pleased with the SBAC test’s content. “Most English teachers have found that the test itself seems, from what can be observed, to be a good test — a test that is skills-focused, well-aligned with Common Core standards and with the type of big-picture, significant skills most of us focus on in our classrooms,” Moffitt said.

The math department administered the test using four Chromebook carts purchased by the Lowell Technology Committee, with funds from the school budget, the Parent Teacher Student Association, and the Alumni Association.

Although grants for the Chromebook carts had been approved by the Tech Committee in October 2014, the administration delayed the purchases until the committee created by-laws and updated its tech plan for the school in February, according to Marten.

Some teachers believed that receiving the equipment earlier could have helped better prepare for the testing. “There were a couple of difficulties that we experienced during the administration of the test,” math department chair Thomas Chambers said. “It would have been easier if we received the equipment earlier, but we survived the way that it was.”

The math department experienced fewer issues with the testing, limited to a minor router incident in Room 275 and Chromebook battery life concerns, according to Chambers. Despite concerns regarding the Chromebooks’ battery lives, the laptops lasted the two-hour testing blocks.

In addition to technical issues, SBAC testing caused scheduling conflicts for the teachers in both the English and math departments.

“I calculated the math and I lost 7.4 percent of my spring semester instructional days and I think some teachers lost even more.”

Students not enrolled in a math class were pulled out of their regular classes to take the math test in another class, or took it during free blocks, according to a report Chambers made on the SBAC testing requested by Giles. Additionally, testing on the two regular C/B code days, Thursday and Friday, proved to be inadequate due to long set-up and login times. As for the English department, at least six days of instructional time were lost, some teachers possibly losing nine, due to testing, according to Moffitt.

Senior students also lost instructional hours as a result of the testing. While juniors were busy with SBAC testing, seniors in mixed classes were placed in separate rooms for study hall, according to English department chair Meredith Santiago.

The English department saw multiple areas of improvement for the SBAC testing and would like more formal training next year. The 40-minute training for teachers administering the test was not clear due to the district trainer using unfamiliar terminology, according to Ritter. The district trainer also did not address everything that could come up during testing, according to Ritter.

Organizing proctoring was also a major area for potential improvement, according to Moffitt. “I see no reason why only English and math should give this test,” she said. “At no point is my expertise as an English teacher at all a factor in my proctoring. I calculated the math and I lost 7.4 percent of my spring semester instructional days and I think some teachers lost even more.”