PARCC Testing Down for all of New Jersey Wednesday

A system-wide crash in the controversial PARCC test has resulted in all schools in the state of New Jersey being forced to cancel their scheduled PARCC exams for Wednesday, April 20.

"This is a statewide outage in New Jersey," PARCC spokeswoman Heather Reams told Patch. "No other states in the PARCC consortium are affected. A statewide outage has not happened before today in New Jersey or in any other PARCC Consortium state. It is a technical issue."

The tech glitch originated with the testing platform provided by Pearson, the company that administers the PARCC exams, said New Jersey's Education Commissioner David Hespe.

A clearly angry Hespe said the system crash was "totally unacceptable. This is not a problem on our end. This is a problem on Pearson's end," he told NJ.com.

The glitch left many third through eleventh-grade New Jersey students staring at blank computer screens Wednesday morning. Many school districts said the system crash resulted in a waste of time and money, as some schools have delayed openings for the PARCC test. Others bring in substitute teachers to help administer the tests.

"Our aggravation is that we've called all these substitute teachers ... now they're just sitting around," Rocco Tomazic, Superintendent of Freehold Borough Schools, told the Asbury Park Press.

"We are doing everything possible to get the system back up," the state's deputy DOE Commissioner Peter Shulman said in an apologetic email blast to school districts Wednesday.

Reams said Pearson is working to fix the problem. They hope to have it fixed by Wednesday afternoon.

In related news, New Jersey May Have Broken Law On PARCC, Judge Says