FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — About 14,000 students at 61 schools in Fulton County will be unable to take an important test due to an outage reported by the vendor.
According to a Fulton County Schools spokesperson, the parents of students in third, fifth and eighth grades were recently notified that their students would not be able to take the "Iowa Test" due to the issue.
The school district said that it is already a third of the way through the test administration window, and the vendor hasn't provided much information about the problem or a timeline for when they can resume testing.
The school system added that all tests from Monday are invalid due to students being unable to access material, students being interrupted, system outages, a "less than ideal" testing environment even for schools that completed the test and some schools being forced to finish tests altogether.
According to a description from the school system, the Iowa Assessments are a "nationally normed" achievement test used to measure skills in reading, English, language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies.
The test can usually be used to determine placement for Talented and Gifted (TAG) students but won't be eligible due to the issues. However, the school district said the inability to take the test "will not impact our ability to identify potential TAG students or find students eligible for TAG."
"The district is preparing a plan to provide the Stanford 9 as an achievement score for any students who meet screening criteria and need the score for eligibility," the system said in a statement. "This plan will be shared with principals by the end of the day on October 25."
The school district has also sent a message home to parents that read, in part, "this decision will not negatively impact your child in any way. Plans are being made to ensure that all student placement decisions using IOWA results will be adjusted as needed."
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