The state of Alaska has chosen a familiar group to conduct standardized tests for students across the state.
On Thursday, the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development announced that it has picked Data Recognition Corporation to run tests for students starting in April.
“They partnered with us for nearly a decade … on the Standards Based Assessment, said Brian Laurent, data management supervisor at the Department of Education.
The Standards Based Assessment was the state’s primary standardized test before Alaska launched a multi-year, multimillion-dollar effort to create its own test, the Annual Measures of Progress exam.
That idea collapsed when the test failed to deliver the measurements administrators were expecting. Last year, technical problems at the testing center in Kansas left students unable to take the computerized exam. After repeated problems, the test was canceled.
Under federal rules, standardized testing is required in order to receive federal funding. Alaska’s canceled tests meant the state had to apply for a waiver, which it received earlier this year. One of the conditions of that waiver: The state come up with a new test in time for the end of the 2017 school year.
“We have a very constrained timeline. This is now Dec. 1, and our test window does open in a little under four months,” Laurent said.
Alaska tests students in grades 3-10 on English and math, and it gives a science test to students in grades 4, 8 and 10.
Those tests are used to grade students’ progress and determine how well school districts are performing. Without those tests, the state and the general public would have fewer benchmarks to judge schools’ effectiveness.
Under House Bill 156, passed by the Alaska Legislature this year, the state was able to bypass its normal procurement procedures to speed the selection of a testing company.
Laurent said a team of 21 people from across the state gathered in Anchorage in October to vet six companies that had responded to the state’s request for information.
That team narrowed the options to three, and the state selected Data Recognition Corp. from those three. Pearson and Measured Progress were the two runners-up.
Five other states use Data Recognition Corp. for the same type of standardized tests: South Carolina, Nevada, Louisiana, Missouri and Wisconsin. Laurent said the state spoke with representatitves from two of those states, and they said they were satisfied with the company’s performance.
Alaska already has a deal with Data Recognition Corp. to run standardized tests for “English Language Learners” students — typically kids from other countries who are learning English as they attend school.
The state has a budget of $4.45 million to fund the new testing program this year, and about $3.5 million of that is federal money, Laurent said.
A contract has not been signed with Data Recognition Corp., he added, but representatives from the company will be in Juneau next week to negotiate that deal and the details of the test itself.
The state expects that contract to be a series of one-year agreements extending from this year to the 2021-22 school year.
• Contact reporter James Brooks at james.k.brooks@juneauempire.com.
Correction: The last name of Brian Laurent was misspelled in the first version of this story.
