OKLAHOMA CITY — Winter testing opportunities for about 50,000 high school students will go ahead as planned since the Oklahoma State Board of Education on Friday approved a new testing deal.
The $3.4 million, no-bid contract is with a New Hampshire-based, nonprofit company called Measured Progress.
In late September, the board balked at a recommendation by the state Department of Education to pay $2.8 million for winter testing to CTB McGraw-Hill — the same vendor the state fired months earlier after statewide testing disruptions occurred for the second year in a row.
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State Superintendent Janet Barresi told the board then that no other vendors had expressed interest in the contract, but board members were extremely critical of the proposal and asked Barresi and her staff to look for an alternative.
CTB McGraw-Hill promptly withdrew from consideration.
Barresi’s chief of staff, Joel Robison, told the board on Friday that Measured Progress had initially indicated “their plate was full,” but another contract fell through and they “reopened their discussions with us.”
Robison said state officials also considered the University of Kansas as a possible vendor, but it would be able to offer only paper-and-pencil tests, and Oklahoma statute requires online testing to be offered.
State officials also told board of education members that Measured Progress passed the Oklahoma’s Office of Management and Enterprise Services examination of its technological capabilities to conduct the winter tests.
“It’s hard to negotiate with somebody that’s the only one,” board member Bill Price said.
Board member Dan Keating asked how the cost of the CTB McGraw-Hill proposal compared with the Measured Progress proposal. He and Price noted the $600,000 higher price tag.
State officials said that during the course of negotiations, Measured Progress agreed to a decrease of $100,000 to arrive at the final figure of about $3.4 million.
Without further comment, the board voted unanimously to approve the deal.
Member Cathryn Franks was absent.
Oklahoma law requires students to pass four of seven end-of-instruction exams in core subjects in order to earn their high school diplomas. The majority of students take EOI exams during the spring testing window, but winter testing is also offered for students who attend high schools on block schedules or on the trimester calendar.
There also are typically alternate testing opportunities for disabled students during the winter testing window.
Schools will be impacted by the delay in awarding the contract by having less time to do training and to configure school computers for the online tests. Also, two of the testing windows have been pushed back.
The new schedules:
- Dec. 1-5 for optional retesting
- Dec. 8-Jan. 9 for winter testing online exams and Dec. 8-19 for winter testing paper exams.
The testing window remains unchanged for students who attend schools on the trimester calendar. Those dates are Jan. 19 through Feb. 13 for online exams and Jan. 19 through Feb. 6 for paper exams.
