Alaska's Dept. of Education has permanently canceled an unpopular and problematic standardized test, just one year after public school districts across the state implemented the computer-based aptitude test.
The second Alaska Measure of Progress - or AMP - was supposed to be administered to students in grades 3rd through 10th during a five-week window this spring. Unalaska students were scheduled to take the AMP test this week.
But after ongoing problems plagued the test's vendor - the latest being a severed fiber optic cable at the University of Kansas, home of vendor AAI - the department of education canceled any further use of the AMP test in Alaska.
KCAW’s Emily Kwong spoke with interim Department of Education Commissioner Dr. Susan McCauley on Friday.
"We now know that the system was patched in a manner that folks thought would work. We didn’t know that until yesterday after things crashed, but the reality is that it doesn’t have the bandwidth right now necessary to support students in Alaska and Kansas testing at the same time," McCauley said.
The canceled test leaves schools in a hard place, says Unalaska Superintendent John Conwell.
“We’ve put a lot of time into preparing for this test so it will be interesting to see how the department responds to the requirements from the federal law that we give a summative evaluation to our students," Conwell said.
The federal government requires public schools to administer a summative test – like the AMP – that measures critical thinking and students' mastery of standards every year.
From the beginning, the AMP has been strongly criticized by educators and administrators. In fact, the test drew so much ire that it was canceled permanently after this year. Former commissioner Mike Hanley decided in January that the current school year's AMP testing would be the last. The Department of Education will request proposals for a new test system for next spring.
Conwell hopes the new test will package scores better.
“We really want to see results that can be used by teachers to inform instruction so that it gives us information on individual children that we can see where the gaps in their knowledge – where the gaps in their education are and then address those through some interventions," Conwell said.
