PSAT cancelled for today?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the PSAT, SAT, and AP testing on school days, MCPS students loose a lot of instructional time for a for profit company. Our tax dollars including pay for teachers who proctor the tests and the fees paid by MCPS are being used to prop up a company that is no longer relevant.

Point taken on waste, but technically College Board is a nonprofit.

It is a nonprofit with a CEO making $1.2 M

Yep. Nonprofit just means management takes the revenue instead of sharing it with investors.

[Anonymous]

Tutor here - completely predictable that the transition to all electronic PSAT & SAT would not be the smooth sailing College Board is claiming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Einstein got through it just fine. They were required to use their school-issued Chromebooks.

According to my junior, there was an announcement on the PA that logins might be glitchy, but they should keep trying.

I gather some testing rooms started later than others, though. My kid's finished pretty much on schedule, but they were held until the rest of the testing was complete. But it wasn't a huge delay, maybe 15 minutes.

My freshman at Einstein was signed up for it but couldn't take it due to the glitch. They sat around until after noon when classes started.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Einstein got through it just fine. They were required to use their school-issued Chromebooks.

According to my junior, there was an announcement on the PA that logins might be glitchy, but they should keep trying.

I gather some testing rooms started later than others, though. My kid's finished pretty much on schedule, but they were held until the rest of the testing was complete. But it wasn't a huge delay, maybe 15 minutes.

My freshman at Einstein was signed up for it but couldn't take it due to the glitch. They sat around until after noon when classes started.

Yeah, my kid thought everyone else had finished it, because their room sat around for a while waiting for the others to wrap up.

So I was surprised that the principal’s letter mentioned the makeup date for anyone who couldn’t complete the test. I wonder how many there were.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry, I’m not in MCPS, but curious - did your schools require the students to come in prior to the the test date to program their devices for the PSAT? Just wondering if they did this and are still have issues.

At our school everyone did a test last week - it did not matter.

College Board was like Ticket Master for Taylor Swift tickets - not ready.

Yes, Churchill did a chrome book check last week. Obviously, something was missed.

Chromebook check as in downloading Bluebook app?

It wasn’t the student chromebooks or Bluebook. The problem was the College Board servers that the proctors needed to access to administer the test. Some proctors were unable to allow students to take the second half of the test. For a paper test, the equivalent would be the proctors opening up a box and finding out that the math section was missing, or the answer sheets were damaged, for example.

+1

I heard the same.

[Anonymous]

Education is owned by the politicians and the testing companies. It always comes back to those two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Between the PSAT, SAT, and AP testing on school days, MCPS students loose a lot of instructional time for a for profit company. Our tax dollars including pay for teachers who proctor the tests and the fees paid by MCPS are being used to prop up a company that is no longer relevant.

Maybe student test takers will learn that lose is the opposite of gain or win, and loose is the opposite of tight. But also that the College Board is a nonprofit, and that it is still helpful to have objective national tests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Between the PSAT, SAT, and AP testing on school days, MCPS students loose a lot of instructional time for a for profit company. Our tax dollars including pay for teachers who proctor the tests and the fees paid by MCPS are being used to prop up a company that is no longer relevant.

Point taken on waste, but technically College Board is a nonprofit.

It is a nonprofit with a CEO making $1.2 M

So? It's a big operation. No one qualified is going to volunteer for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Poolesville is ok. Just received a message.

Did Poolesville complete the test? Why did it work at Poolesville and not at other schools?

we (Poolesville) did a homeroom last week to make sure all student devices were operating correctly with the online platform which helped some -- but mainly the staff kept hitting refresh until it worked -- it was just an issue with the College Board site the proctors used to start the test. We deliberately built in extra time in case something like this happened, so we didn't feel rushed or worried when it took an extra 15-20 minutes to get things started

Our private did that as well, and then students updated their devices to IpadOS 17 which caused issues. They were able to catch them on time, and fix them, but that's because they were dealing with 100s and not 1,000s of kids.

So weird to know which os version your kid is using at school. I mean really weird.

[Anonymous]

Northwood started an hour late but finished the exam.

[Anonymous]

Why has the College Board not put out a statement about this nationwide debacle?

[Anonymous]

I don't think it was a nationwide debacle...many schools finished.

[Anonymous]

Blake rescheduled for later this week and sent this message: “While most schools in MCPS were able to complete testing with little to no disturbances, eight were not able to get 100% access and were impacted by scheduling restrictions, which is why they were directed to end testing.”

[Anonymous]

Churchill rescheduled for Thursday.

My DS was having no issues when their testing group was stopped, but clearly it impacted enough in the school for them to cancel things.

[Anonymous]

Any word from Blair?