Firm must agree to new contract to avoid change
James Salzer - Staff
Thursday, July 5, 2001

Georgia elementary and middle school students may face a new battery of tests during the upcoming school year --- again.

State officials will decide in the next few weeks whether to dump the Stanford 9 --- which just this past year replaced the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills --- after months of problems with the company that puts out the national exam.

Such a change would come as the Department of Education is implementing state curriculum tests, first introduced in some grades in the spring of 2000, and just before the start of new end-of-course exams for high schoolers.

Education Department officials say they have set a Friday deadline for Harcourt Educational Measurement to agree to a new, $690,000 contract for the Stanford 9 that includes stiff penalties if the company is late returning results or if the exams include errors. The state contract pays for testing in grades three, five and eight. School districts in Georgia spend about $2 million more for the Stanford 9 in other grades.

If no agreement is reached, the state Board of Education could put the standardized testing out for new bids in hopes of having a national test for students to take during the spring of 2002. The board is expected to discuss the issue at its monthly meeting next week.

"They have an ultimatum," said Melanie Stockwell, the Education Department's director of legal services.

Harcourt, which has about 40 percent of the nation's testing market, missed a series of deadlines to deliver the test results in May and June. Those results are used --- when they reach systems on time --- to help assign students to summer school, special classes, pinpoint their weaknesses and measure their progress before they leave school for the year. Because they were late, the results couldn't be used as diagnostic tools before the end of the school year, a key reason for giving them in the first place.

Officials called it an example of the problems companies are having keeping up with the proliferation of tests ordered by reform-happy states. Some experts fear an increase in errors and delays under President Bush's plan to have states test each child in grades three to eight in reading and math. Harcourt had problems getting test results out on time in at least nine other states, Georgia board members said.

"I think what has happened to all testing companies is they are overcommitted," Stockwell said.

Harcourt President Eugene Paslov appeared before the state Board of Education last month, requesting another chance and promising to do better. "What happened is inexcusable," Paslov told the board. However, since then, Harcourt has missed another deadline --- the delivery of systemwide results to districts by June 30.

Attempts to reach Harcourt officials for comment were unsuccessful.

The sticking point in a new contract includes increases in potential fines for delays and errors that could eat up --- according to some estimates --- anywhere from 30 percent to 60 percent of what the company would be paid by the state. Some board members wanted the big fines, starting at $1,000 a day, because they felt the existing ones --- $100 a day --- didn't give the company enough incentive to deliver on time.

The problems come only a year after the board agreed to switch tests, in large measure because the Stanford 9 was cheaper. Prior to that decision, the same version of the ITBS had been given to Georgia children for years.

School officials also weren't able to use the results of the state's new curriculum test, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, as a diagnostic tool before the end of the school year. But that delay was expected. State officials hope to get results more quickly once teachers can give the CRCTs online, something that could happen next year.

"I'm looking at this as just a temporary problem we have to get through because of the newness of the test," said state School Superintendent Linda Schrenko.

However, if CRCT results can't be returned by the end of the school year in the future, it calls into question the test's use, starting in 2004, to help determine which children are promoted to the next grade.

"If that happens, you have created nothing but a test for the sake of testing. There is no way you can use a test that gets back here in August for (ending) social promotion," Schrenko said. "If that's the case, I would just as soon not give it."

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001