Kansas University-based online state assessments for K-12 students are back up and running smoothly this week, but Alaska students aren’t resuming them alongside students from other states.

Citing sporadic access last week — the culprit: construction crews cutting a fiber cable on KU’s campus — the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development canceled all its computer-based testing for the rest of the year, the department announced.

After experiencing testing connectivity interruptions March 29 through March 31, Susan McCauley, Alaska’s interim commissioner of education and early development, said in a statement Friday she was unwilling to keep the state’s schools “in this state of uncertainty.”

“The purpose of assessment is to provide valid, useful results. To have valid results, all students must be given the test under the same conditions,” she said. “At this point, some students have been interrupted by online connectivity problems while they tested, in some cases repeatedly. We cannot with certainty say that this year’s assessments will provide an accurate reflection of all students’ knowledge and performance.”

The KU-based Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation (CETE) developed and administers official online state assessments for all Kansas and Alaska school districts, as well as tests for students with cognitive disabilities in more than a dozen other states.

The March 29 fiber cut shut down Internet service to the KU campus as well as outsiders’ access to websites and applications housed on KU servers — including all the CETE tests.

Alaska had already planned for this to be the last year for its Alaska Measures of Progress tests and will request proposals for a new test to begin in 2017, according to the Department of Education and Early Development.

“We are disappointed that Alaska is canceling its online state testing,” said KU CETE director Marianne Perie. “We understand that there are contextual reasons specific to Alaska that made missing four days of testing especially difficult for them.”

Perie said CETE and Alaska education officials were still determining exactly how the contract will be modified following the cancellation.

Perie said she expected the loss of Alaska’s contract to affect CETE financially, but not destructively.

“We have contracts with multiple states, including Kansas, and we have several research grants,” she said. “Our staff will be covered, and we expect to continue to grow.”

Perie said CETE staff worked all weekend “reconfiguring” its system to speed up connections to schools.

“Service has been solid this week,” she said, and CETE reported 12,000 students testing simultaneously with no problems Monday.

Kansas State Department of Education spokeswoman Denise Kahler said Kansas Assessment Program tests were inaccessible last week but restored Monday morning.

“Everything seems to be going well,” she said Wednesday.

On the KU campus, websites and Internet access were restored in phases throughout last week. However, the same construction mistake also downed telephone landlines. Green Hall and the engineering complex landlines were still down Wednesday and not expected to be repaired until Monday.