Source: EdSource

Students at Redwood Heights Unproblematic School in Oakland taking computer based tests.

Source: EdSource

Students at Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland taking computer based tests.

The State Board of Teaching on Midweek awarded the Educational Testing Service a three-year, $240 million contract to administrate the state's standardized tests, despite a competitor's call for reopening a bidding procedure that information technology called flawed and "capricious."

ETS has run the state's testing system for 13 years and was the choice of the staff of the land Department of Education and two panels of reviewers. But Pearson School, the lowest of the three bidders with a $206 million bid, protested after the state board in March gave ETS tentative approval on the status that ETS revise its bid to replicate aspects of Pearson's plan involving instructor training. Board members called for the interest, "to the greatest extent possible," of teachers in scoring the next generation of tests, at no additional cost.

A series of recent breakdowns and technical snafus with online tests in other states (see here, here and here) underscore the importance of contracting with a reliable, experienced testing company. Along with providing the software to deliver the state's tests, the contractor responds to problems from more than a thousand districts and lease schools, oversees exam scoring and delivers the results to districts and schools.

The contract with ETS volition be largest awarded by the state Department of Education. The land was non required to take the everyman bid under the form of bidding that was used, and it had authority to negotiate contract changes with a preferred applicant. That'southward what a team of negotiators did over 3 days concluding month, said Keric Ashley, state deputy superintendent of the Commune, Schoolhouse, and Innovation partitioning of the Department of Education. The event was a number of changes that improved the contract, including meliorate test security, a quicker reporting time of test results to districts, and parent guides in five languages, he told the country board. Based on Pearson'southward approach, there also will exist more extensive training and better hourly rates for scorers who are California teachers, he said.

But copying a meaning part of another applicant's proposal is "unprecedented in public procurements at virtually whatsoever level – federal or state," wrote Douglas Kubach, president of Pearson School, a Minnesota-based division of Pearson, the world's largest instruction publishing and consulting company, in a March xxx letter to the country board. Kubach called on the state lath to begin the behest again. Reviewers gave ETS a higher score, notwithstanding the land board instructed negotiators to adopt Pearson'south model – "unavoidably an admission (by the state board) that its scoring was significantly flawed," he wrote.

ETS will continue to handle the administration and scoring of the new online tests, including the Smarter Balanced English linguistic communication arts and math tests in the Mutual Cadre State Standards, which debuted this spring, and the nevertheless-to-be developed Next Generation Science Standards. The tests characteristic more sophisticated performance tasks, requiring students to write essays and show their piece of work. Individual scorers will grade these portions of the exam.

Pearson'due south proposal promised professional evolution for California teachers in these tasks through county offices of teaching. It said it would hire WestEd, the San Francisco-based nonprofit research and development system that is developing Mutual Core and new science curricula, to lead the trainings. The proposal said it would increase the number of California teachers every bit test scorers by paying them $17 to $xix per hr.

Patricia Rucker, who works as a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association, chosen $20 per hour "insufficient" and predicted that fewer than half of the scorers will end up being teachers.

For this year'due south initial Smarter Balanced tests, ETS is paying but $13 per hour to scorers. The country reports that only ten percent of the scorers volition be California educators, and not all of those will be certificated teachers.

In its revised bid, ETS said it will hold summer institutes and weekend trainings for teachers and would pay California certificated teachers $20 per hr to be trained in and score the tests. Ashley acknowledged that's less than teachers earn per hour, but the principal benefit, he said, would be the knowledge that teachers would gain in both the end-of-the-year tests and the interim assessments that teachers would requite during the yr.

Withal, lath member Patricia Rucker, who works equally a lobbyist for the California Teachers Association, called $20 per hour "insufficient" and predicted that fewer than one-half of the scorers will end upwardly being teachers. Teachers "carry the greatest brunt to encounter that students are prepared and have the greatest stake" in the exam results, and yet nevertheless volition non be non the chief focus of the recruitment strategy for scorers, she said.

During public testimony, Doug McRae, a retired specialist in assessments who did work for both ETS and Pearson during his career, said that ETS failed to match Pearson's commitment to train teachers and did non specify how it would pay for the professional development it promised. Giving ETS the contract, McRae said, would be "an insult to a fair, open, competitive process, too every bit an insult to California public schools and taxpayers by opting for an junior submission at a far higher price."

But board members Sue Burr and Rucker praised Ashley and the negotiators for responding to the land board's concerns. And 1 of the reviewers of the bids, Roger Yoho, assessment and accountability director of Corona-Norco Unified, said the ten-day process was thorough and professionally done. He supported the choice of ETS.

ETS has handled the rollout of the Smarter Balanced tests, which 3.2 one thousand thousand students in California are now taking. Ashley said that, dissimilar significant outages and technical problems in other states, testing in California has gone smoothly for the most part. Susan Green, director of assessments for San Juan Unified, told board members that online testing has gone well in her district. "Changing the contract could put a halt to the progress nosotros have made then far," she said. "ETS has met our need."

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