More Great "holes in annual data"

from Alaska:

Alaska officials have canceled the state’s computer-based standardized testing for the year, citing repeated technical problems that were interrupting students’ exams, throwing schools into chaos and threatening the validity of results.

“I don’t believe under the circumstances that the assessment we were administering was a valid assessment,” Susan McCauley, interim commissioner of the state education department, said in an interview Tuesday. “Validity relies on a standardized assessment condition, and things were anything but standardized in Alaska last week.”

The cancellation means that tens of thousands of Alaska’s public school students in grades 3 through 10 won’t sit for math and reading exams that are mandated under federal law, leaving a hole in annual data on student performance statewide, and in each district and individual school. Science tests for students in grades 4, 8 and 10 also were canceled.

and New Jersey:

TRENTON — When New Jersey scrapped its old standardized tests in favor of the new PARCC exam given on computer, education officials said the online tests would be less costly and easier to score than the old paper-and-pencil exams.

But Wednesday, state education officials experienced the downside of online testing when a computer glitch left students across the state staring at blank screens.

New Jersey was forced to postpone testing in grades 3 through 11 for the day as its testing vendor scrambled to figure out what went wrong with PARCC, short for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.