State Board Of Education To Move Forward With RISE Test Scores After Statewide Glitches
Oct 3, 2019, 3:26 PM | Updated: Jul 15, 2023, 11:00 am
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — Officials with the Utah State Board of Education heard recommendations to move forward with the RISE test results after glitches occurred statewide during student testing last year.
“We know this was a difficult testing year for our students and teachers because of the service interruptions,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Sydnee Dickson. “The good news is this analysis shows consistency between this spring’s tests and previous years, giving us a chance to acknowledge increased student performance and a chance to offer help where needed.”
The meeting started at 9 a.m Thursday and the board decided to move forward with the results after noon. Evaluating took place from internal and external evaluators, including a non-biased third party and it was announced during the meeting students were not impacted in a negative way despite the disruptions where some students were unable to move forward to round two of the test.
“We haven’t found any evidence there was a problem with the scoring of the assessment questions, remembering that the test is built on questions we own what we purchased from Questar was their delivery system,” said Darin Nielsen with the Utah State Board of Education.
Nielsen said a board meeting doesn’t typically take place to go over or discuss test results, but given the amount of publicity received from the disruptions during Utah’s assessment testing for third through eighth grade students, it was agreed to discuss the findings publicly.
The glitches occurred last spring and the state ended their contract with test provider Questar, back in June. The test administration summary showed there was no negative effect by the disruption and the results are usable. Even still, board members said Thursday they re-entered into a three-year contract with the American Institute of Research who administered the tests the year before.
“They were able to come back and help us and so we have a three-year system with them and I’m happy to report we’ve met all of our deadlines so far with them and in fact, our benchmark for the interim tests are already available to our teachers,” Nielsen said.
