Students across Alaska started to take the new statewide standardized test last week without major issues, according to the state Department of Education and Early Development.
It's a turnaround from last year, when the state canceled the exam after only a few days of testing amid significant technical problems that cut off access to the online test, including when construction workers severed a fiber-optic cable in Kansas, where the state's testing vendor was located at the time.
The state education department has since contracted with a new vendor to deliver the latest version of the annual exam, called Performance Evaluation for Alaska's Schools, or PEAKS. The testing window started March 27 for the paper-based test and the following day for the version delivered on the computer.
"There have been no major problems," said Brian Laurent, data management supervisor at the Alaska education department, in an interview Friday. "We haven't had any disastrous construction incidents — which is a very good thing."
Roughly 80,000 students in grades 3 through 10 will take the standardized test over the next month, said Margaret MacKinnon, Alaska's director of assessment and accountability, in an interview Wednesday.
Some will take the exam on the computer and others on paper — it was up to the school district to decide, Laurent said. He said about half the districts chose to administer the test over computers, including four of the state's five largest districts. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District opted for the pencil-and-paper exam, said Melissa Sadlowski, district assessment coordinator, in an interview Friday.
"The goal was to disrupt instruction fewer days," Sadlowski said. While it will take students the same amount of time to complete the exam, schools don't have to close computer labs, she said. Mat-Su students will start the exam Tuesday.
In Anchorage, testing started March 28 for students in grades 3 and 7. A snowstorm canceled school in the city Wednesday and students took the exam on one of the make-up days, said Kathy Clawson, district test coordinator, in an interview Thursday.
But aside from the snow, Clawson said, "We're not seeing major issues at all, actually, it seems to be going fairly well."
The estimated time it will take students to finish the exam varies by grade. For a third-grader, the language arts portion is estimated to take 75 minutes and the math portion 70 minutes. Students in grades 4, 8 and 10 also have to take a science portion, estimated to take one hour, according to the Anchorage School District.
Out on the remote island of Saint Paul in the Bering Sea, Pribilof School District Superintendent Brett Agenbroad said the district's 40 or so students completed the exam by Friday. The six students and one teacher from the tiny school on the neighboring island of Saint George flew to Saint Paul the week before testing to attend a basketball camp, and then stayed to take the standardized exam, he said.
Agenbroad said the school had 100 percent attendance for the exam days. He said he was pleased that students at the school could take a paper version of the test, in a community where internet connectivity is "touch and go."
"Everyone involved was thankful for a paper-based test," he said. "In very small systems like ours with limited connectivity, it was so much better."
In Northwest Alaska, Bering Strait School District Superintendent Bobby Bolen said that about a third of its students in grades 3 through 10 had started testing on computers by Friday.
He said about two dozen students ran into a problem at the start of the week: a feature on the test that was supposed to read the questions aloud didn't work. It's a testing accommodation provided to a small percentage of students, according to the state. It was fixed by Friday, Bolen said.
"We're in pretty good shape," he said. "Everyone is off and running. We don't have any complaints right now."
The testing window for the paper exam ends April 7 and for the computer exam, April 28. MacKinnon said the state hopes to have scores out in August.