Students across New York were unable to log in to the digital platform for the state’s grades 3-8 math exam Wednesday morning, raising fresh questions about the transition to computer-based assessments.

The New York State Education Department told schools they could pause or delay the math tests, officials confirmed.

The issue affected schools across the state, including some in New York City where schools were expected to administer the exams sometime between April 28 and May 8.

“More than 116,000 students tested without error this morning, with thousands more expected to complete testing later today,” state Education Department spokesperson JP O’Hare wrote in a statement. “Since the testing window opened, more than two million exams have been successfully submitted.”

Officials declined to provide specific numbers of affected students. But O’Hare said it was a “limited number.”

Upon learning of the problem, O’Hare added, “NYSED immediately contacted our vendor, NWEA, to expeditiously address the issue.”

State officials said schools can administer the exams at a later point during the window, which runs through May 15.

The city’s messaging to caregivers struck a somewhat different tone. A letter principals were encouraged to distribute said “many” students were unable to complete the test and “we are pausing the administration of the Math exam and will reschedule once we receive the assurances we need that no additional disruptions will occur.”

A message to principals encouraged them to postpone state testing scheduled for Thursday.

New York’s multi-year transition to computer-based tests has been by . This year’s problems come amid a against the proliferation of technology in schools, including the amount of time students spend on screens.

After , the state fully transitioned from paper-and-pencil tests to computer-based tests this spring. The grades 3-8 English language arts exams have already been administered.

Some principals began receiving notifications Wednesday morning from the city’s Education Department about the login problems with Nextera, the state’s testing platform.

“We are receiving a high volume of escalations about students having trouble logging into Nextera,” city officials wrote in an email obtained by Chalkbeat. “It is happening statewide.” The message said schools could continue testing if students had already logged in, but should cancel testing for the day if students continued to have problems.

Officials at NWEA, the state’s testing vendor, said they “have directed all available internal resources” to fixing the problem and hope to have the system running by Thursday.

“The cause of this has not yet been identified, which means the fix is also pending,” Simona Beattie, a company spokesperson, said in a statement.

At one Brooklyn elementary school, students were unable to log in to start their exams for more than an hour but were eventually able to log in and complete the tests, according to the principal who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I’m sure there are going to be parents who feel like it’s not going to be the best picture of their child’s performance because of the way it happened today,” the principal said. More broadly, the school leader wishes the state would keep paper and pencil tests, especially for younger students who have to “learn a whole other set of skills” to take them digitally.

At another Brooklyn school, a teacher proctoring the exam for a group of sixth graders with disabilities said that one of the seven students was able to log on. The rest spent two hours trying before the school allowed them to take a break and play basketball in the gym.

“They were frustrated but understood there was nothing we could do,” said the teacher, who requested anonymity since she was not authorized to speak. “They were so patient.”

After their gym break, the students were able to log on and take the test, the teacher said, but she questioned the validity of the results.

“Your purpose is to test them, it’s not to test them after two hours of testing their patience,” she said.

City teachers union President Michael Mulgrew blasted the state Education Department in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

“Once again, students and educators were left scrambling because the state failed in its responsibility to hold its vendors and consultants accountable,” he said.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .Ěý

Picking out a baby toy – whether it’s for your own child or a friend’s kid or the child of a family member – can be overwhelming. Although Americans spend a year on baby toys, it’s difficult to know which toy will be fun, educational and developmentally appropriate. The options seem endless, with search results at common retail sites in the hundreds, if not thousands. Is price a reliable indicator of quality? Are technological enhancements useful?

Our – published in the American Journal of Play in April 2023 – surveyed the toy market for babies and toddlers age 0-2 at two major U.S. national retailers, with an eye toward differences between battery-powered toys, like the , and traditional toys, such as the .

We found significant differences between these two toy types in terms of how they’re marketed – with more traditional toys marketed as supporting physical development and more technological toys aimed at cognitive development. However, these companies do not always have researchers investigating whether the toys actually help children learn.

As and , we offer five tips before you buy your next baby toy.

1. Consider your goal

When purchasing a toy, consider whether you have any particular developmental goal in mind. For instance, do you want your baby to develop fine motor skills by playing with a , or to by building a block tower?

2. Look for open-ended toys

Many parents and caregivers know that children often more than the toy inside it. One reason is that boxes are open-ended toys – they can become anything a young child dreams up. Conversely, a toy cellphone directs the type of play much more rigidly.

A good rule of thumb is to choose toys that require . For example, infants can explore a set of realistic miniature animals sensorially – usually by putting them in their mouths – and then later use them for pretend play, or even to create animal footprints in play dough. Contrast this experience with a large plastic elephant that needs to sit on the floor and lights up and makes elephant sounds. Here, a child is limited in play, with the goal being to make the object light up or play a sound.

3. Recognize gender biases

Several major retailers have over the past decade, opting for “kids” instead of “boys” and “girls.”

However, if you enter the store of one of those major toy retailers today, you will still find some aisles filled with pink toys and dolls, while other aisles feature monster trucks and primary-colored blocks. A toy sword might not be labeled as “for boys,” yet shoppers often perceive it that way based on . If you look only in certain aisles or at stereotypical toys, you might miss out on toys that your child would enjoy regardless of gender.

4. Be wary of marketing claims

The makers of tech toys often make claims about their educational potential that are not backed by science. For example, an electronic shape sorter might claim to help children develop emotional skills because the toy says “I love you!”

Be skeptical of such claims, and use your own experience and insights to evaluate the educational potential of a toy. You might read the retailer and manufacturer descriptions, but also see what the toy actually does. If it fosters caregiver-child interactions or helps to develop a specific skill – like how building blocks support spatial skills, and finger puppets build fine motor skills – then it is likely a toy worth considering.

5. Prioritize human interactions

Keep in mind that toys are not chiefly designed to create baby geniuses – they are meant to be fun! So think broadly about whether you want a new toy to support physical, social, emotional, cognitive or creative development while keeping it fun. And remember that no toy can replace between caregivers and children.

Research suggests that when playing with tech toys versus traditional toys with their children. So choosing traditional toys, such as nonelectronic shape sorters and building blocks, may be one way to foster the types of interactions that support healthy development.

Overall, research suggests that, in most cases, traditional toys provide than technological toys. When purchasing a toy, think through the experiences you want the baby in your life to have, think broadly about the goals of a particular toy, try to provide opportunities for and remember to have fun.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .