Upon opening their laptops, PHS juniors were immediately faced with problems accessing the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment, which took place statewide on March 13 to 17. With some students not being able to open the test at all, the state test required for graduation left both teachers and students alike confused and worried.

“Monday was challenging. [Only] two-thirds of students were able to successfully submit their assessment [on Monday]. What happened was as soon as we began logging into the system [on Tuesday], we probably had 50 percent [of juniors] or maybe just slightly over that range [complete the test],” said Director of School Counseling Services Dana Karas.

Issues opening the test started immediately. Most students didn’t have much trouble logging in, but problems started to emerge as proctors instructed students to start their tests.

“On Monday, despite numerous tries, my test was stuck on the loading screen and there was nothing I could do. On Tuesday, there was an error saying that the test was corrupted … and when we tried quitting and signing back in, we were stuck on the tests page where the resume button was gray,” said Matthew Chen ’24.

The administration worked closely with the technology office and Pearson, the creator of NJGPA, in order to identify the various issues that have caused many students to sit and wait the entire morning for other students in the room who gained access.

“On Monday morning, schools began to log into the system and the start button was not viewable. There were some issues with our use of MacBooks, and we had other things like making sure Siri and video were shut off. And then there were certain updates that some kids just didn't push onto their computer… What happened on Tuesday was a completely internal PHS concern that arose and it had to do with our server,” Karas said.

Chen was one of the many students who were unable to access the tests. Due to the restrictive rules prohibiting students from doing specific work, he felt that his time was being wasted.

“It was relatively boring since we were told that we couldn’t really use the internet … I feel like our potential time spent in class learning is being wasted on these two hours that we weren’t able to accomplish anything,” Chen said.

Teachers and moderators were also caught off guard by this situation. Although technical errors aren’t uncommon during online testing, they have never seen something to this extent, forcing testing to be canceled on Wednesday to resolve these issues.

“There [have been] matters where many students were trying to log on and they weren't able to, the computers were freezing up when they were loading, [which] was a big problem. We kept getting this thing that said fatal error, which again, I have no idea what that means,” said PHS science teacher and proctor Mark Eastburn.

Despite the overwhelming number of students unable to access their tests, Eastburn applauded the tech office and counselors for their sufficient efforts and efficiency.

“We sent students to the tech office or to the counselors… who work incredibly hard at the school. And there were a lot of things they were trying to keep up [with],” Eastburn said.

Facing these issues at a high volume, Eastburn believes that it was unfair for students and faculty members to bear the burden of these problems.

“Pearson and the state of New Jersey are the ones who are in charge of everything. And this isn't the first time we've had tech issues with online tests, and I don't think it'll be the last,” said Eastburn. “When things don't work properly, everyone gets overwhelmed, and I don't think that's necessarily fair. I don't know why it should be dependent on the school to figure everything out when this is a state of New Jersey and a Pearson thing, I don't know why they're not providing more support.”

In order to streamline the process and minimize the number of students needing to miss class instruction time the week after for make-ups, students were allowed to take an unfinished portion of the NJGPA after they had finished that day’s section.

“If when they finish [they realize], ‘Oh, I still have an hour,’ the teacher can unlock a previous unit that they were experiencing issues with and allow them to make that up,” Karas said.

Students that still had sections remaining after Friday were required to make up their testing the week after. Meanwhile, 50-minute afternoon classes were cut to 35 minutes in order to allow juniors to complete two testing sections in the morning, showing the after-effects of the interruptions at the beginning of the week. Although there were still residual consequences of poor preparation, Karas assures that the issues were addressed with urgency and care to make sure the effect on students was small.

“It literally took a village, our entire testing team … all day to figure it out,” said Karas. “It was a lot of work and exhausting … It was equally frustrating for us, their teachers; all the proctors in the room were trying so hard to support the kids.”