State officials are warning school districts about technical problems they may face with upcoming online exams. Hundreds of thousands of students may have to go back to paper and pencil for their final exams this month.
State education officials say they can't guarantee their computer system will be able to handle the Career and Technical Education exams. The issue would affect about 350,000 students.
Jo Anne Honeycutt is the CTE director for the state's Department of Public Instruction. She says the online system has trouble handling large amounts of students at one time.
"Especially when many of our exams have lots of graphics," she says. "We're going to get it right, but we just have not had time to do that this testing cycle."
The system malfunctioned during winter exams in January. While the state doesn't have official numbers yet, Honeycutt says many students didn't complete the tests.