RPS will not administer state tests due to cyber incident

ROCHESTER, Minn. (KTTC) – Rochester Public Schools (RPS) announced Monday that it will not be able to conduct Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) testing in early May as it continues to restore systems after a cyber incident

This is due to a number of reasons:

Passwords would need to be reset on more than 10,000 student devices. While this process is underway, RPS could not guarantee reaching every student device successfully in the available time.
In addition to password resets, all student and proctor devices require installation of testing software to successfully conduct testing for students.
Certain tests require the ability to stream video. Streaming video is a high bandwidth activity at a time that RPS’s wireless internet services running at reduced capacity.
State technology and regulation does not allow the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) to extend the testing window for any districts within the state.
RPS is not able to administer paper tests as MDE and its contractor are unable to make available the volume of paper tests required.

RPS said it is working with MDE to understand what this will mean for students, and will share an update with families as soon as it is available.

“We reached the conclusion that we are not able to implement the state assessments very reluctantly. We take those tests seriously as a measure of the performance of our system, and a tool for meeting the educational needs of our students. We look forward to resuming administration of the MCA tests in future years after we have resolved the cyber security incident we are working through this spring.”
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Kent Pekel