PSSA testing disrupted due to "technical issue," state Department of Education says

School districts throughout Pennsylvania experienced major hiccups while administering the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams, creating confusion and heightened emotions in classrooms.

Students and administrators received pop-up error messages on their screens on Tuesday morning. North Hills Assistant Superintendent Beth Williams said the district noticed the issues about 10 to 15 minutes into testing.

"I don't know that anyone really had a full picture as to what was going on," Williams said. "Probably 60 to 70% of our students either had been logged in and kicked off or hadn't been able to get logged in at all."

She said what followed was about 45 minutes of chaos. Schools have been preparing for this for months, as this year is the first that all districts were mandated to administer the tests online.

"It was very frustrating to reach the point today where we're telling our kids, show what you know, like you're prepared, we're ready to go, and then unfortunately, we were unable to do that, and it was out of our control," Williams said.

Eventually, the North Hills School District received word from the Pennsylvania Department of Education that the program run by Data Recognition Corporation was fixed. The district then continued testing. 

Spokespeople from other districts in the region, including Pittsburgh Public Schools and the Seneca Valley School District, said they also continued with their scheduled exams, while other districts said they postponed testing until Wednesday.

In a statement to KDKA, the Pennsylvania Department of Education said there was a "technical issue with the testing platform" run by Data Recognition Corporation. The statement went on to say the issue was resolved in about 40 minutes. 

"If standardized assessments are disrupted for any reason, PDE works closely with affected schools to ensure that students have ample opportunity to complete their assessments," the statement said.

KDKA reached out to the Data Recognition Corporation for more details on what happened, but the company said to contact the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

Some districts started testing on Monday, while others started on Tuesday. Williams believes it was an overload of the system due to everyone being online. She said once some districts dropped off, their connectivity picked up.