Florida Probing Cyber-attacks That Delayed School Testing

March 10, 2015
Miami

(Updates with response from exam administrator, contrast censor and background)
By Letitia Stein
TAMPA, Fla., Mar 9 (Reuters) – Florida authorities are questioning cyber-attacks that behind newly computerized standardised propagandize contrast final week, a state preparation commissioner and a conduct of a state law coercion dialect pronounced on Monday.
The review stemmed from reports that a series of propagandize districts encountered “white screens” after logging into a argumentative tests final Thursday, a agencies pronounced in a news release.
The contrast complement was operated by a Washington-based American Institutes for Research (AIR), according to a release.
AIR identified a cyber-attack on a server used to discharge a tests as a means of a problems, state officials said, observant that a problems fast subsided and contrast continued.
“It is critical to indicate out that AIR has reported that while entrance to a exam has been behind since of a cyber-attacks, no tyro information has been compromised,” Education Commissioner Pam Stewart pronounced in a statement.
AIR pronounced it was operative with a state agencies though declined serve comment, citing a rapist investigation.
The exam involves Florida’s chronicle of a argumentative Common Core standards, that set inhabitant benchmarks for tyro performance. This apportionment of a comment was newly computerized, and many propagandize superintendents had warned a state was not prepared for online testing.
Earlier in a week, many Florida propagandize districts had gifted apparently separate delays due to technical issues with a computerized tests, a agencies noted. [ID: nL1N0W5220]
Last year, a cyber-attack disrupted online contrast in Kansas, according to a National Center for Fair and Open Testing, famous as FairTest, that called for an eccentric review into Florida’s issues.
In a statement, FairTest’s open preparation director, Bob Schaeffer, questioned either a reported conflict could be “a really available forgive for a mechanism complement fall that confronted many Florida test-takers for several days final week.”
Despite a issues, state officials remarkable that scarcely 400,000 students – some-more than 60 percent of those purebred for a exam – were means to finish it during a initial week of a two-week contrast window.
The computerized essay test, partial of a English-language humanities assessment, was administered to students in a eighth, ninth and tenth grades.
Testing continues this week, with additional computerized and paper-based standardised exams scheduled for a entrance weeks. (Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Eric Walsh)