Online glitch disrupted 200,000 NC student tests. What schools are doing now.
A glitch Wednesday on North Carolina’s online testing system interfered with final exams for more than 209,000 students.
Students across North Carolina are finishing up the school year by taking state end-of-grade exams in elementary and middle schools and end-of-course exams in high schools. But a statewide system error caused an outage for 40 minutes Wednesday morning on the NCTest platform, according to a message State Superintendent Mo Green sent to lawmakers.
NCTest is the online testing system used by DPI to administer statewide assessments. The state Department of Public Instruction initially reported the outage affected 120,000 students before giving the higher figure of 209,675 students in a letter sent to House Speaker Destin Hall and Senate leader Phil Berger.
“We regret that this happened,” Green said in the letter to legislative leaders. “We are conducting a thorough review of this incident to identify the root cause and implement additional safeguards to prevent similar occurrences.
“The NC Department of Public Instruction remains committed to providing reliable, secure testing platforms that support fair and accurate assessment of student learning.”
Options for affected students
Green said the outage affected 209,675 students who began a test on Wednesday. He said 171,725 students completed their tests.
“To ensure fairness and minimize disruption to approximately 40,000 students and schools that faced testing challenges, we provided local education agencies with three flexible options to address any testing sessions that were interrupted,” Green said.
The three options were:
▪ Resume testing on Wednesday.
▪ Pause testing and resume it on Thursday.
▪ Declare a test mis-administration and begin a new test on Thursday.
Impact by district varies
The effects of the malfunction varied by school district.
In Wake County, a spokesperson said that as far as they knew that all district students were able to resume testing after the system went back online.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools confirmed it experienced an interruption in the state’s testing platform around 9:35 a.m. Wednesday but a spokesperson said they weren’t yet sure how many students within the district were affected.
“The number of students impacted varies by school,” the spokesperson said. “School principals and testing coordinators are reviewing and amending testing plans if their students were impacted and will communicate with their school’s staff, students and families if changes to the end of year testing schedule are required.”
Union County Public Schools alerted parents to the issue Wednesday afternoon. Students who were unable to complete testing Wednesday, the district said, will have to complete it another day.
“Schools will communicate directly with families about any changes to their test schedule,” the district’s email to families said.
This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 12:54 PM with the headline "Online glitch disrupted 200,000 NC student tests. What schools are doing now.."
