Utah state education officials knew that Questar had a problem-filled record, but they picked it anyway and gave it a contract for $44 million.
From the Salt Lake City Tribune:
In other states, the year-end tests were marked by glitches and cyberattacks and hourlong delays. One school district threw out its results because the software was so unreliable. In another, all of the students had to start over when the programming shut down and didn’t save their responses.
Sensitive student data was stolen in New York and Mississippi. More than 1,400 students took the wrong test in Tennessee.
But even after those issues arose — and despite clearly knowing about them — Utah signed a $44 million contract with that same testing company last spring to develop the state’s standardized exams, now called RISE. And the rollout hasn’t gone well.
As students here have tried to submit their tests, their computer screens have frozen and some haven’t been able to recover their work.
“This is clearly problematic,” said Darin Nielsen, the state’s assistant superintendent of student learning. “It hasn’t performed like we had hoped or expected. There are frustrations for many people across the state.”
The outages in Utah have delayed more than 18,000 public school students in completing their assessments this April and May. For one day, no one was able to take a science exam. On at least four others, testing was stopped entirely for some school districts.
The state has had to expand the testing window into June. Now, it’s questioning whether the scores it gets back will even be valid enough to use.
Will students be denied their high school diploma based on this invalid test? Will schools be closed or teachers fired?
Stupid is as stupid does.
Why doesn’t Utah trust its teachers to write their own tests? They know what they taught, they know their students. Let them decide.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
RISE from the dead
RISE from the dead
Is what Questar did
By Utah they’re fed
And rolling in bed
OK, everyone, please join in on the chorus:
When will they every learn? When will they eeeee-ver learn?
Idiots.
You know what Upton Sinclair said about getting a man to learn when his salary depends on not learning.
This is Utah we are talking about.
And this from Mark Twain:
“You tell me whar a man gits his corn-pone, en I’ll tell you what his ‘pinions is.”
Au contraire, they have learned a lot. They’ve come a long way in learning how to extract profit from all sorts of places you might not have thought likely – public institutions, wars, poor people. They’re very innovative and getting better and better at it every day!
Getting more and more brazen, too.
They don’t even try to hide it any more.
extract profit: the entire game in two words
The scores always come too late to be of any use. And, of course, in ELA they are COMPLETELY INVALID, so even if they did come in time, they would be meaningless.
Oh, you thought the tests were supposed to be of use for teachers? The tests have many uses, but who cares about teachers? When you need to “prove” that public schools are failing (and make a tidy profit on the side), the tests are extremely useful.
They are EXTREMELY useful for selling tests and computers.
Don’t you love the stupid names these stupid people give to their stupid tests?
RISE
Ridiculous, invalid student examinations
Rise against RISE
I’m waiting for someone to call their test
ERECT
Which, of course stands for Error Riddled Egghead Test
Of course.
What did you think I meant?
Error Riddled Egghead Commoncore Test
Hey! That’s a good one!!
44 million. That’s 4.4 million student novels. That’s 11,000 art labs or language labs or science labs.
The Utah legislature once allocated $5 million for Cold Fusion sight unseen (before it had been confirmed, which it never was)
The state is made up of two types: those who are too dumb to know better and those who take advantage of those who are too dumb to know better.
And there is a small number who are actually not dumb, but they are safely ignored because they are such a small minority.
HA! In March of 1989, I went into my office and told my staff, “Today, EVERYTHING changed. Two scientists have just announced a successful achievement of cold fusion.” But, alas, the experiment wasn’t replicable.
Funny story:
When I lived in Utah, I once overheard someone at the voting place asking which lever to pull to vote Republican.
It’s getting more obsene everyday.
Diane’s correct. Teachers should write their own tests and eliminate the cost of a middleman.
Questar is a subsidiary of the “non-profit” ETS. ETS is criticized for its status as a non-profit paying no federal corporate income taxes. The major client of ETS is College Board. Nonpartisan Education Review provides interesting information about College Board, “Does College Board Deserve Public Subsidies?”.
The IRS advises against the practice of non-profits paying their governing board members which Wikipedia claims ETS does. (I couldn’t find a listing of the board members.) From the photo array of ETS leaders, I’d conclude the U.S.. is a racial monolith.
Questar did a poor job in Utah, but all companies that have tried to run large-scale computerized testing programs have had significant problems. See — https://www.fairtest.org/computerized-testing-problems-chronology
Thank you, Robert! Yes! It’s the nature of the beast. Questar is no better or worse than any of these testing scam operations.
Suggested rebrand: Quixoticar
Hey now, let’s not bring in the noble Don Quixote de la Mancha into this.
Don Swacker, Hidalgo,
¡Mis disculpas!
Tennesseans can tell you of their incompetence. You would think that one of these outfits would at least be capable of looking like they were doing something. Their computer based testing functioned slower than our old vendor did on paper. That defines failure by any standard. Questar did not even do a good job of presenting our students with a stupid test. They reminded me of the quintessential fool saying “heyall, wachius” before jumping out of a moving truck onto a stationary mule. Even people who bowed at the altar of testing were gob smacked by the blunders.
From 2006-
“Toolkit from ETS and SETDA… Using Data for School Reform”
(SETDA is an association of public employees from the 50 state depts. of ed.)
Toolkit includes
ETS research supporting the need for statewide data systems, which SETDA members can use to make their case to state-level policy makers…a policy recommendation regarding data for reauthorization of NCLB…
sample templates that state state-level tech directors can use to explain why state-wide data systems are so important including opportunity for individualized instruction
2019-
New Profit and iNACOL (an international association for K-12 online learning), headed by a Pahara Fellow (an organization funded by Gates) is something to watch for.
“Now, it’s questioning whether the scores it gets back will even be valid enough to use.”
The scores have never been valid. It takes a certain twisted way of thinking to believe the what psychomeretricians have led everyone to believe about the tests. They talk in terms of validity while we should be looking at all the onto-epistemological invalidites involved in the standards and testing malpractice regime as delineated by Noel Wilson in his never refuted nor rebutted 1997 dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error.”
For a shorter take down of Wilson’s of the validity issue see:
A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
The “standards” are very vague, broad, abstract statements of skills, not something concrete and simply operationalized and measured (like whether the kid knows what 9 times 9 is. On a typical one of these high-stakes ELA tests, are one or two questions for each “standard.” Is that sufficient to measure, validly, proficiency on a standard that is that vague, broad, and abstract. Well, clearly not. But somehow the whole is supposed to be what no part is–valid. So, the ELA tests don’t validly measure what they purport to measure. But there is another traditional sense of validity, as used in assessment, that is applicable. A measurement is valid if it highly correlates to some accepted external measure of the same thing. Where are the studies of the validity, vis-a-vis some accepted external measure, of the measurements (the one or two questions on standard x)? There are none. There is no validity testing of this kind AT ALL.
These people are running scam. They bury the scam in lots and lots of obfuscating pseudoscientific marketing hype. And, of course, teachers and other qualified professionals aren’t allowed to view the questions to judge their merits. We’re supposed to take on faith that the questions are well prepared. LMAO!!!! This is particularly amusing because the best of their questions–the ones that they release as samples–are rife with errors. So, the testing companies sell their service sight unseen (which is kind of like me selling you protection from evil spirits. You send me 44 million, and I will use my special magic powers make sure that evil spirits don’t attack you).
These tests are a scam. Enough!!!!
(And, how much of that 44 million would you be willing to donate?)
Students were not denied their diplomas. There is no graduation test required for the state. The students don’t even take a standardized test in 12th grade in Utah. The roll out was catastrophic, and wasted hours of instructional time. And next year, teachers can choose to make the standardized raw score, which shows up immediately, part of a student’s grade
As I understand it, the Utah testing requirements are as follows:
RISE ELA and Math tests in 3-8, science tests in 4-8, and writing tests in 5 and 8, ASPIRE English, Math, Reading, and Science tests in Grades 9 and 10, and the ACT, which is a requirement for all students.
Exactly right. The Aspire test is one and a half times longer than the ACT. I don’t know why that is. Students have not seen their Aspire scores. I don’t know if they even will. Boooooo!!!!!!
The Aspire test contains both ACT questions and Utah-specific questions.
Breaking news. Utah has terminated its contract with Questar as of Thursday night. Wonder what’s going to happen now
Sunshine is the best disinfectant