Students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School experienced technical issues regarding the new online testing application for the PSAT/NMSQT on Wednesday, Oct. 11. This resulted in a two hour delay in the testing schedule and similar issues across the country.
The College Board announced they would be using a new platform, Bluebook, to digitally administer the PSAT. Students were instructed to download the program from the Broward County Public Schools Company Portal the day of the exam. However, the service experienced issues from around 7:45 to 9:15 a.m., causing problems for both students and teachers.
“There were over 2,000 students testing [at MSD] alone,” testing coordinator Matt Winans said. “If you add on the students in the state, then the students in the whole country, you can see it overloaded the system, so it crashed the company portal.”
Students were able to find a solution by downloading Bluebook directly from a browser instead of the company portal as instructed. They were then able to get the test started after waiting for a couple hours.
While the issue was resolved and the PSAT proceeded as normal, students were released at 12:15 p.m., nearly two hours later than expected. Parents were alerted about the situation through an email. This ended up affecting the schedule for the rest of the day and also affected the time students got to leave early if they had filled out the permission forms.
“The problem caused me to get out later than I hoped,” sophomore Emma Schwartz said. “I ended up staying at school for the whole day.”
The original schedule planned for students who remained at school to attend shortened classes that were 30 minutes each. However, the schedule changed to a combined lunch and a full eighth period.
“I think that enough teachers have sent complaints to the College Board so that next time they do tests like this, the issues will be resolved,” Winans said. “I hope that the tests went well for everyone despite the issues.”
The College Board released a statement the same day, detailing the situation and apologizing to all who were affected. While some schools had to cancel their testing because of the issues, MSD was not affected to that extreme and scores should be released within the coming weeks.
