By Christopher Magan

St. Paul Pioneer Press

Parents will have to wait a little longer to see how their children stacked up against the rest of Minnesota on this year’s student achievement tests.

The state Department of Education said Monday that it was delaying until Thursday the release of results of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, or MCAs, because its “data comparison and validation” was taking longer than expected.

The department had planned to give the media a sneak peek at the scores Monday and release them to the public Tuesday. School districts already have their MCA results, and some districts have released those scores to parents.

Each spring, students from third grade to high school take proficiency tests in math, reading and science. Their scores are used as accountability measures for school performance and teacher evaluations.

This is the first year the MCAs were taken almost exclusively online, and problems plagued the testing system provided by international assessment giant Pearson.

Educators complained that the system was slow and filled with glitches, and Education Commission Brenda Cassellius halted testing twice because of computer crashes, cyber attacks or other problems.