North Carolina’s EOG Disaster: If a Teacher Did This, They’d Be Fired
40,000+ students had their finals disrupted by the state’s system failure; if a teacher made this mistake, they’d be out of a job.
Let’s Talk About Failure, The Kind That Would Get a Teacher Fired.
I’ve shared before that I disagree with the entire structure of America’s educational system, and I say that as a first-year teacher in public education. Now that I have completed my first year teaching, I am more convinced that the Department of Education should be dismantled, not restructured.
Now, I see my fellow teachers who are in graded subjects (Social Studies is not one of those subjects, I do not have to worry about an EOG for my students), who have worked hard all year, have the moment they’ve trained their students for stripped from them.
Picture this:
It’s the Olympics.
An athlete, trained for years, launches off the starting blocks, only to be stopped mid-race because the timers failed.
No one knows how long the delay will last.
Their body cools, their rhythm breaks, their mental edge evaporates.
When the race resumes, it’s not the same; the conditions are different, and the outcome, tainted…
Now replace that athlete with a student in North Carolina. Replace the Olympic timers with the state-run NCTest platform, and you’ve got the chaos that unfolded during EOG testing this week.
40,000+ students.
Mid-test.
And the entire system crashed.
Let that sink in…
And what’s the DPI’s response?
“Oops. Just have them sit still. We’ll let you know when it’s back up. Maybe pause. Maybe restart. We’ll figure it out.”
That’s not leadership; that’s negligence hiding behind a tech excuse.
If a Teacher Pulled This, They’d Already Be Feeling the Burn
Let me be crystal clear:
If a classroom teacher had a group of students mid-test and somehow misadministered it, even due to technical issues outside their control, they’d be written up, dragged through meetings, and possibly fired.
The public would question their licensure; parents would drag their name, asking, “Why did their child have to do more because the teacher couldn’t get it right?” and the board would ensure that some example was made.
But when the state screws up..?
Crickets.
No immediate accountability, no public apologies to be shared with the admin and staff, and no message to the students who now have to deal with the grades they received as a result of taking the Start-Stop-Restart Test, one which had their momentum obliterated.
This Is Not Just an Inconvenience, It’s a Violation
Standardized testing already pushes students to their mental limits.
Now, imagine being a 12-year-old halfway through a math exam and being told, “Hang tight, the test is broken.” That’s not a small hiccup; that’s a psychological hit to their confidence and flow.
And yes, the state offered “options.”
Pause it.
Retake it.
Reassign.
But what they’re really doing is shifting the burden onto school administrators, teachers, students, and parents to clean up their mess again.
Are EOGs Even Needed?
Here’s the Truth About EOGs They Don’t Want You to Hear:
EOGs Aren’t Required - North Carolina Just Chose to Keep Them Anyway
The federal Every Student Succeeds Act doesn’t demand high-stakes testing like this. States are allowed to innovate. To try new, inclusive, and holistic ways to assess learning. But North Carolina? They chose to stick with the broken system. They chose rigidity over relevance. That’s not leadership, it’s laziness.
EOGs Give You an Incomplete, Misleading Picture of Your Kid
One test. That’s all it takes to label a child. But the test doesn’t account for creativity, character, work ethic, or leadership. And when a math EOG is loaded with complex reading problems, how do you even know what your kid struggled with, reading or math? You don’t.
Testing Runs the Show, Not Child Development
Let’s be real: our kids are being treated like test-taking machines. No play. No fresh air. Prisoners are guaranteed more outside time than elementary students in this state. You think that’s an accident? No. It’s a system that prioritizes metrics over mental health.
Testing Steals Time from Real Education
Reading and math receive the majority of the funding and attention, while subjects such as Social Studies, the Arts, and Wellness are often treated as secondary. But these aren’t extras, they’re the foundation of real human development. You want kids who can thrive in life, not just pass a test? Then stop teaching to the test and start teaching the whole child.
These Tests Humiliate the Kids Who Need the Most Help
If your child has a disability or is still learning English, the system sets them up to fail—and then punishes them for it. It’s educational cruelty dressed up as “accountability.” These students already face an uphill battle. EOGs just pile on more shame.
The State Starves the Schools That Need the Most Support
It’s not the teachers. It’s not the students. It’s the state underfunding the fight and pretending the results are a surprise.
They Use EOGs to Justify Gutting Public Education
Ever heard of the NC School Report Cards? They’re based on EOG scores, and they’re being used as an excuse to funnel public funds into charter and voucher programs. They’re stripping public schools bare, with less pay for teachers, fewer librarians, nurses, counselors, and social workers. Meanwhile, they pat themselves on the back for “choice.”
Reducing a Kid’s Worth to a Test Score Is Morally Bankrupt
This system takes your kid’s growth, efforts, and personality and compresses them into one number. Then we slap that number on a spreadsheet and pretend it tells the whole story. It doesn’t. You can flood the school with “you’re more than a score” notes, but some kids still walk away feeling like failures for years.
Private School Kids Don’t Live Like This, So Why Should Ours?
Private schools trust teachers. They use real projects. Real feedback. Real learning. They don’t grind students down with EOGs year after year. If that system is good enough for those with access, it’s damn sure good enough for the rest of us. The difference? They have the money, and we have to fight.
Want to do something about this?
Speak up.
Opt out.
Push back.
Because our kids deserve better than this broken machine.
Who’s Holding the System Accountable?
When did it become acceptable for state-level incompetence to be swept under the rug, while the people in the classroom, the ones who actually care about the kids, get hammered for every procedural detail?
While students are offered the opportunity to retake the test after this malfunction, it’s the original grade the student received that's recorded in the teacher’s review.
Yes, you read that correctly; teachers are evaluated on the scores their students received from a test when the system crashed, not the one where they could take it in a “normal” environment, with a random hour-long freeze in the middle...
Teachers don’t control the software.
They didn’t design the test.
They didn’t authorize the rollout.
But they’re the ones who will get called in, questioned, and micromanaged when things go sideways.
We demand excellence from our educators, which is good because we should. But let’s not pretend like those pulling the strings at the top should be held to a lower standard.
If teachers can lose their jobs or receive poor performance reviews over an EOG misstep, then the people who built and oversee the broken system damn sure should face the same public scrutiny.
This Is Bigger Than a Test
It’s about kids.
This is about trust.
It’s about leadership.
Because at the end of the day, this wasn’t a glitch; it was a system-wide failure that will have ripple effects in evaluations, class placement, and future performance and the silence from the top tells us all we need to know about where their priorities lie.
They’re not protecting your kids.
They’re protecting their own positions.
Welcome to the North Carolina public education system:
Where teachers are expected to be perfect, and the state can fail 40,000 students and call it “a hiccup.”
- Zac Small
PS: Stay loud. Stay involved. And subscribe to TheDailyDraftNewsletter.com for more truth they won’t put in the school emails.