Walt Drane, executive director of the Office of Student Assessment, emailed principals, superintendents, and district coordinators on Friday. He stated that Questar Assessment Inc., the testing vendor used by Mississippi, was supposed to send third grade scores to students who needed them before graduation. However, the email indicated that districts should expect to get the results by Friday at 8 p.m., but the department received them and shared them with the districts on Saturday morning. The 24-hour delay in receiving the results did not affect a student’s ability for graduation. “We regret that this issue has affected school personnel. The Mississippi Department of Education will further address the issue with Questar Assessment,” a spokesperson for the department said via email on May 14. The department discovered last year that 951 students were affected by an error made by NCS Pearson Inc., the state’s former testing vendor. Some of these students were allowed to graduate accidentally. The State Board of Education ended their nearly $28 million contract to Pearson and approved a 1-year emergency contract with Questar for administering the texts in the following school year. Questar is not the only issue for the department. In January, 663 students from Tupelo and Jefferson County schools were affected by a data leak. These students represent less than 1% of the students who took the assessment. However, the Mississippi Department of Education stated in a press release that an “unauthorized user” viewed student records of students at certain district middle schools._x000D