Alarmed by widespread reports of technical malfunctions plaguing students taking state assessments, Assemblyman Ed Ra (R-Franklin Square) is calling for hearings to investigate why these issues persist and how we can solve the problem moving forward.

“This is about oversight. Questar was paid $44 million to get this right,” said Ra. “They need to be accountable to our students, and they need to be accountable to taxpayers across the state. It’s bad enough that we’re still so focused on needlessly stressful, high-stakes exams. For kids to have to deal with the added anxiety of seeing their progress on the test disappear and need to start over is completely unacceptable.”

Ra noted that technological issues relating to the exams have been widespread in recent years, including delays and malfunctions last year and a student data breach in 2017.

“Questar is under contract with the state until next year. Do we still believe they’ll deliver what they say they will? They have a lot of explaining to do, and we believe that they should have to testify in front of the entire Assembly Committee on Education,” said Ra.

As the long-time Ranking Minority Member of the Assembly Committee on Education, Ra has been deeply critical of the state’s over-reliance on standardized testing and spearheaded a bipartisan effort to decouple the tests from teacher evaluations.