Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google


Nebraska Department of Ed Signs with New Provider for Most Online Testing

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 05/10/17

The Nebraska Department of Education is mixing up how it handles high-stakes testing in coming years. The agency is making the change after suffering through several years of problems with its online testing systems. In 2014, the department decided to pitch the previous year's grade 8 and 11 writing tests after experiencing "computer glitches" where about 3 percent of state test-takers couldn't log in, lost connectivity, lost essays or couldn't submit their work. Then in 2016 other problems hit students from hundreds of schools, including an inability to log in and loss of access to the online dictionary or spellchecker.

In both years the department was working with long-time contractor Data Recognition Corp., a Minnesota company, on developing and administering the tests.

Last week the agency decided to parse up the work among two contractors.

  • The Northeast Evaluation Association (NWEA) will deliver "general assessment services" for grades 3-8, in a five-year, $29 million contract that starts with the 2017-2018 school year; and
  • Data Recognition will continue to be the provider for alternate assessment services for students with profound disabilities in grades 3-8 and 11 in a five-year, $6.7 million contract that begins in the same timeframe.

The agency had already decided to move grade 11 students off state accountability assessments and have them take the ACT as a replacement for assessments in reading, math, science and writing. That contract is worth $1.7 million a year.

An article in the Lincoln Journal-Star quoted education department members as saying that as part of the change they wanted to begin issuing adaptive tests, in which students' individual testing experiences differ depending on how they answer specific questions. With the shift in testing companies, the agency is also hoping to get test results into the hands of educators faster and to provide assessments that can be used throughout the year to measure student progress.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • tool icons with variety of business icons

    SETDA Releases Free EdTech Quality Action Toolkit

    The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) has put together a free K-12 EdTech Quality Action Toolkit that provides a framework for evaluating education technology products as well as guidance on regulatory compliance, templates for communicating with vendors, training resources, and more.

  • cyber security padlock

    Report: AI Adoption Forces Trade-Off Between Speed and Identity Security

    AI adoption is forcing enterprises to trade security for speed — and identity controls are the first casualty, according to a new report from Delinea, a provider of identity security solutions for both human and AI agent identities.

  • Neon blue security locks with a single red highlight

    With AI, Cybersecurity Focus Shifts from Finding Flaws to Fixing Them

    For decades, one of cybersecurity's biggest challenges has been finding vulnerabilities before attackers do. A growing number of security professionals now say artificial intelligence is changing that equation, shifting the focus from discovering flaws to fixing them quickly enough to prevent exploitation.

  • abstract data flow

    Google Announces New Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform

    Google Cloud has introduced a new platform for building and managing enterprise AI agents, as the company seeks to turn its Gemini models and Vertex AI tooling into a broader system for automating business workflows.