Redefining Fairness: Why Remote Proctoring Matters for Virtual Schools Today

In our 2024 Snapshot, the Digital Learning Collaborative (DLC) noted that:

High-stakes testing for students in full-time virtual schools presents unique challenges, including issues of accessibility, integrity, and fairness. As more students enroll in full-time virtual schools, understanding and addressing these challenges becomes crucial, especially as evidence emerges following the pandemic that performance and participation increases when online schools are permitted to administer state tests to students in a virtual setting using remote proctoring, thus enabling online students — just like students in traditional schools — to take tests in the setting where they learn each day.

The DLC is now working on a pair of white papers we will issue in the Fall, one framing the equity challenges of requiring digital learners to take face-to-face tests, the other providing insight into how difficult face-to-face testing is for online schools and their students, sharing what at least 13 states have now done to move toward remote proctoring of online tests, providing evidence that it works, and recommending some specific policy and implementation improvements. The DLC is also still looking for sponsors for this project, especially support for a comprehensive case study of the situation and opportunity in one state.

Here’s a little of what we’ve learned so far, and we encourage you to share information, data, insights, and ideas. We’ve already found that as concrete and specific as this topic is, it is energizing to anyone who has experienced it and raises many interesting questions.

Testing is a crazy process for online students, families, and schools. Most US public school students in grades 3 through 8 and some high school grades take state-mandated tests in reading and math with some other subjects sprinkled in. States give schools a window - Kansas schools had five weeks this past Spring - to break up the testing and integrate it into the school day so students can rest between sessions and teachers can minimize learning disruption. But online schools have to use those same five weeks to send teachers all over the state to set up computers in random hotel conference rooms for students whose parents take off work to drive them an hour or more to cram as much testing in as they can before driving home. On March 26, some 5th and 8th graders drove over an hour to do a recommended six hours of testing on the only testing day left in Colby, Kansas, after a blizzard had canceled the other one and rescheduling wasn’t possible because the computers and proctors had to be in another location.

Versions of this play out all over the country, costing schools and families time and money and putting significant and unproductive stress on students. In Wisconsin test participation is a factor in school accountability (as it is in most states), but families have the right to opt out. One school reports that every teacher has to cancel at least a day's worth of instruction and drive around the state to help proctor testing sessions that three-fourths of families opt-out of, saying the test results, which arrive months later, are of no use to them.

COVID got some states to try remote proctoring and it worked fine. Several states responded to the COVID emergency by working with their test vendors to allow students to take required state tests online. After California allowed remote proctoring in 20-21, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) did an in-depth analysis of the data at the student and test item level. It concluded that remote testing was “reasonably comparable” in most circumstances. The following year, California had over 300,000 tests entirely or partly remotely administered and proctored, and the practice continues to be allowed.

The COVID emergency was a vast natural experiment in remote proctoring of online testing, and research findings are still coming out. Some published research, which we will share in the upcoming white papers, suggests that concerns about cheating are unfounded. Other research has documented the stress and negative implications of forcing digital learners to take tests in distant, unfamiliar environments. It shows that remote proctoring does significantly reduce these problems. There is preliminary evidence that students do better on remote proctored tests, which, on some level, is obvious but also may have implications for how we think about accountability for online schools.

Over a dozen states have now taken steps toward remote proctoring, and there are lessons to share. Arkansas, California, Kansas, Oregon, Utah, and West Virginia have either implemented remote proctoring or are ready to go for 24-25, and Wisconsin is piloting it in 24-25. Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and Oklahoma have passed legislation, but remote proctoring still needs to be implemented. (Virginia has also approved it, but only for some tests.) One challenge for implementation is that only some testing vendors have supportive psychometricians and capable technology. Another challenge is that some states have required 3rd party proctors, whose digital presence can trigger the same anxiety students feel in strange conference rooms with in-person proctors they don’t know. The white papers will delve into these and other issues, make some recommendations and suggest further research and exploration in other areas.

Allowing remote proctoring of tests for online students is a minor issue to anyone who has not seen the problem up close. However, it raises essential equity and access issues. It also leads to more significant questions about the validity and reliability of the assessments and the most efficient and effective ways to gather and use assessment data. Like many such concrete and specific policy topics surrounding digital learning, remote proctoring provides a window onto a much broader range of questions for educational policy writ large.

We’re excited to complete these white papers and welcome interest in supporting additional related efforts. We hope to follow with further research and publishing on other specific policy and implementation issues that affect digital learning. In the meantime, please reach out here if you know something about efforts in states listed or not, or have other information, data, insights, or ideas.