The Echo

Whether you love the News Journal or hate it, it's the only daily in town, when it comes to local news. So, I find it rather complacent that buried on B2 is this story (definitely deserving of a front page lead!) - about the heart of Gov. Markell's education reform and the state's bum effort in getting that off the ground.

The legislation has been passed. The RFPs (Request for Proposals, or essentially bids on the contract) went out in March and today, July 30th, we learn that the DOE is restarting the bid process for the DCAS, the replacement assessment for the miserable DSTP, the bain of educators statewide. With the deadline to pilot DCAS looming, DOE is redrawing it's RFP because they failed to ensure it complied with state laws. It's all in the story, below. And though Dr. Lowery believes that the department will still meet the deadline, it makes this board member an angry parent! I've supported the DOE openly and with fidelity in moving into the DCAS model. Knowing how this was to be the diamond in the Markell/Denn budget rough, I expected that the DOE would have sealed this baby up in a perfect package, having done their homework as they expect Delaware's students to do theirs.

We cannot expect more of our children than we are willing to do ourselves!


Del. starting over on bidding for statewide testing
Two companies file lawsuits over process
By JENNIFER PRICE • The News Journal • July 30, 2009

The Delaware Department of Education has started over in its attempt to find a new statewide testing program after a company filed a lawsuit last week protesting the department's handling of its bid.

The American Institutes for Research of Washington D.C. claims that the department did not comply with the evaluation criteria laid out in its original bid request in March for the Delaware Comprehensive Assessment System -- a computer-adaptive growth-model test that will replace the 12-year-old Delaware Student Testing Program by the 2010-2011 school year.

Two days after AIR filed the lawsuit in Delaware's Court of Chancery, department officials announced they were rejecting all proposals because the bid request was "flawed" and not compliant with state law.

"We needed more oversight from attorneys in that process," Education Secretary Lillian Lowery said. "We wrote what we needed conceptually, but we probably needed attorneys looking at it to make sure our concepts comported with the legalities of going out to bid. So we've scrapped everything, and we're starting over."

Lowery said the department plans to revise the bidding documents and reissue the request.

The department had planned to pilot the DCAS this coming school year and begin using the new system statewide in fall 2011. Lowery said the department still will be able to meet that deadline.

"It's more important for us to get it right than get it done," she said. "So we're going to stop and clear the deck and get it done right."

The original bid request had several components:

• An online high-stakes summative assessment that would test reading and math in grades three through eight and science and social studies once each in elementary and middle school

• End-of-course exams for high school students

• An online writing assessment for grades five and eight and once in high school

• A benchmark growth test for grades two through 10 to be taken several times throughout the school year

• An online item bank with test questions for teachers to use on classroom exams

Almost three months after putting out its bid request, the department decided not to award the online writing assessment or the online classroom assessment item bank because of the state's budget deficit.

"It is just too cost prohibitive at this time," Lowery said. "However, we are not going to walk away from writing; we will be working with the school districts to ensure that writing is emphasized."

The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states test in reading and math in grades three through eight and at least once in high school. It also requires states to test in science at least once at the elementary, middle and high school levels. Social studies and writing testing are not mandated.

In the bid request, the department said a testing company did not need to bid on all of the components. Instead, companies could bid on separate components, but the online summative assessment and end-of-course exams needed to be bid on together. AIR submitted bids only for those two components.

But once the bids came in from five vendors, the review committee decided that the efficiencies of a single vendor should be the "primary rationale for selection." According to the committee's final report, selecting multiple vendors would not only increase the total cost to the state but would "create significant additional burden on the local level" by requiring teachers and students to learn two systems.

Subsequently, at the end of June, the department selected Northwest Evaluation Association -- the only vendor that bid on all components and whose Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) test has been piloted in several Delaware school districts and charters -- as the winner and began negotiations despite AIR receiving the highest scores on technical ability and price for the summative test and end-of-course exams. According to documents obtained by AIR through Delaware's Freedom of Information Act, AIR was the first choice overall for 54 percent of teachers who observed a demonstration of the tests.

AIR said in the lawsuit that the department did not give all the vendors fair and equitable treatment.

"They decided to change the evaluation criteria to negotiate with another bidder," said Jon Cohen, vice-president and director of AIR's Assessment Program.

According to a letter sent by Lowery last week to several testing vendors, the department will revise the request and correct any non-conforming language. Lowery would not say whether the new request will require vendors to bid on not only the summative assessment and end-of-course exams but also the benchmark test.

According to the same letter, NWEA had indicated that it would also file suit against the department regarding requirements of a performance bond -- an insurance policy on the vendor's performance. The letter says that what was written in the bid request and what was told publicly to vendors conflicted with what Delaware law requires.