April 8, 2014

Ding dong, the test is dead. I would go on but that's a pretty weak joke. Much like last week, the test worked beautifully on Monday and then went immediately down a steep hill on Tuesday. We started the day testing fifth grade and I don't think any of them managed to finish both parts of the test. There might have been a couple that got within a couple questions but then those questions wouldn't show up so they couldn't be answered. All the kids ended up getting error messages that would kick them out of the test and they would have to log back in. There were a few different varieties of errors but they all had the same result. One kid had finished her test but it froze on the end screen and when she logged back in her test had been wiped and she had to do it again, but luckily for everyone else their progress was saved after each crash. Each kid probably had to deal with at least five error messages, some closer to ten or more. And that number would have been a lot higher but they only had a litter over an hour to take the test and the test was running so slow that each error would take several minutes to get passed, and sometimes one error would just lead to another. It eventually became slightly comical, mainly for me and the teacher. On top of that, two of the kids testing outside of the room didn't even have tests available to take. That was eventually fixed but then they ran into constant errors too.

The principal was at a meeting but we emailed back and forth several times about all the errors and the two kids without tests. One of the sixth grade classes was scheduled right after the fifth grade class but I went up and told the that teacher about the situation so we pushed her test back a little to give fifth grade an extra fifteen minutes. It really wasn't worth testing the sixth grade class but I hadn't heard back from the principal so we decided to give it a shot.

The sixth grade class was slightly more successful. A lot of the kids got error messages, and one never got in, but a few of them were able to finish the first part. And that is all we tried because the principal emailed me to have the sixth grade teacher call her in the middle of the test and it was decided to end the test for a kid whenever an error message popped up. So the majority of the tests were slowly killed, one by one, while a few unlucky kids had to finish the test. The principal told the teacher that it wasn't public knowledge yet but with all the problems the test was still experiencing, the district had decided to cancel the whole thing. Thank god. The testing website had an update saying that the test was experiencing issues but it was still functional. What a loose definition of “functional” they have.

The only thing that bums me out is all the work I put into getting ready for the test. Installing the software on all the computers in the lab and on five laptop carts, making the different lab schedules for each week, making the testing plan spreadsheets for each class, cutting out all the testing tickets, dividing those tickets into classes and separating out kids testing out of the lab, and then organizing the ones in the lab in seating chart order. It gave me something to do but it turned out to be a big waste of time.

With the rest of my day I did things. I got a lot of pictures emailed to me for the yearbook so I uploaded those to the website. I scanned some more sixth grade pictures and finished arranging all the pictures I have so far. I borrowed a laptop and tried logging in all the kids in one of the third grade classes to see if they could get in. Most of them took two or three tries but I got them working, and only three kids are unable to log in. Maybe next year at the beginning of the year I'll take a laptop and a couple days and find out for myself who's login information actually doesn't work and who's login failures can be attributed to operator error. After all the running around for testing and all the testing failures, I had a little bright spot when I was talking two one of the second grade teachers and she said at the faculty meeting yesterday I came up and everyone was saying all the stuff I do for them, so she said it was basically just a meeting about how everyone loves me. If that love could be transferred into a raise, that would be appreciated. But it is nice every now and then to hear my efforts at avoiding boredom are appreciated.

Tonight was pretty much the same as last night. The only real change was at dinner when I added a baked potato to the lineup, along with my fake burger, cheese stick, and carrots and celery with dill dip. The baked potato was from school because there was a baked potato bar in the lounge today. I didn't partake while at school but I did end up with a couple potatoes after the fact. I haven't actually had a baked potato in awhile and it was really good. I kind of want to go buy a bag of potatoes now.