State and ACT negotiating financial settlement in company's failure
to deliver online end-of-course exams
The initial term of the Kentucky Department of Education's contract with ACT Inc. to provide end-of-course exams ran from May 9, 2011 to June 30, 2012. The contract was renewed and the state was set to pay ACT $9,263,920 for the contract period July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2014, but that was before ACT admitted that it lacked the capacity to deliver all of the promised services related to Kentucky's end-of-course exams.
ACT's contract with KDE could be renewed for as much as 6 years (3 two-year periods) but KDE is actively considering other options.
I wrote to ACT when I did the original KSN&C story:
I’m working on a story for Kentucky School News and
Commentary that will say that ACT lacks the capacity to deliver the
promised ACT end of course exams it bid on, and that a planned “stress test”
has been cancelled by Kentucky; this upon ACT’s admission that “the current
system is ultimately not designed to support 20,000 concurrent users.”
Would you care to comment for the story?
ACT's Senior Communications Associate Katie Wacker wrote back that they would like to respond and were circulating a draft statement seeking "consensus" - and then they went silent for a week.
When I pressed ACT for a response they responded with standard issue PR BS...
"We continue to work closely with the Kentucky Department of Education to deliver testing on time using the delivery methods that make the most sense to both KDE and ACT to serve Kentucky students, parents and educators."
I guess they couldn't find consensus.
Anyway, despite ACT's desire to slap a happy face on the
situation, KDE is discussing a negotiated
settlement in response to ACT's failure to meet the terms of their
contract.Kentucky students might have to use pencil, paper for ACT Inc. test
Kentucky high school students taking required end-of-course tests this year have two options: take them at a time that won't crash the online system or do them the old way, using pencil and paper.
Those limitations for testing stem from glitches that have not been resolved with Kentucky's online system for required high school end-of-course tests, according to Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday.
Issues with the system surfaced in May, when an estimated 1,600 students had to retake the end-of-course assessment or needed more time to finish it. Many other students had to take the assessment with pencil and paper, said Kentucky Department of Education spokeswoman Nancy Rodriguez.
As a result, the commissioner asked the vendor, ACT Inc., to run a practice or "stress" test this month to make sure the system could handle about 20,000 Kentucky students.
The vendor was supposed to install software and make hardware fixes to improve the online system, said Rodriguez. But Holliday canceled that practice test recently when officials with ACT Inc. told the department they would not be able to correct the issues by the November practice date or in time for the end-of-course tests in the spring.
"Without a new system up and running, the stress test was not worth conducting," Rodriguez said.
Kentucky's online system can handle about 10,000 students at a time. The state and ACT will have a scheduling system so the online system won't be overwhelmed, according to Rodriguez.
"We're still concerned about it," said Holliday. "So we are moving forward" with a process that could help find another vendor.
Department officials want to see the different testing programs that exist nationwide at the high school level to make an informed decision, Rodriguez said.
Holliday said the state would look for a new vendor for the 2014-15 school year for the end-of-course test. The new vendor would be used for ACT Explore, a high school readiness test that Kentucky eighth-graders take, and for ACT Plan, a college readiness test taken by 10th-graders.
However, Holliday said ACT Inc. could submit a bid that would be reviewed by a committee that makes a recommendation to the department's procurement staff.
Rodriguez said — and Ed Colby, a spokesman for the Iowa-based ACT Inc. confirmed — that ACT was working to prioritize and upgrade the end-of-course testing to handle 100 percent of its contract with Kentucky and other states. ACT's goal is to have the system successfully running by spring 2015.
"We believe the use of ACT programs has greatly benefitted Kentucky students and educators. We feel it is appropriate to respectfully defer comment on business decisions around the state's contract with ACT to the Kentucky Department of Education," said Colby.
Holliday said problems were not related to The ACT, a college readiness assessment test that people often associate with ACT Inc., just the end-of-course testing.
Education Department officials have found that students statewide whose tests were interrupted did not experience a delay in receiving their final grades in May.
Additionally, the department's staff studied the potential effect of the testing interruption on student achievement results and found students who were interrupted during testing did not score systematically higher or lower than students tested under standard conditions, Rodriguez said.
ACT Inc. is trying to get Kentucky test results for the paper and pencil version in a matter of days so the scores could be used in students' final grades, said Holliday.
Because of the online issues Kentucky educators encountered, the state won't have to pay ACT Inc. for parts of the $9.2 million contract. Negotiations between the state and ACT continue, and the total financial impact has not been determined, Rodriguez said.
Meanwhile, Michele Reynolds, director of curriculum and assessment for Fayette County Public Schools, said officials would be working with each school to develop a testing schedule.
"Since we have managed both online and paper-pencil testing in the past, and we have plenty of time to plan ahead for this testing season, this should not be a major issue for our schools," she said.
1 comment:
Sorry, but if the mechanic doesn't fix my car the first time, I don't go back to him again.
I am betting we will never hear about the "negotiated" reduction, but I guess it doesn't matter as we will never see any of it trickle down to our schools.
Sounds like we are going to end up with yet another change in assessment which will preclude the ability to make comparisons with past student achievement on the previous instrument. After 20 years of this stuff we have warehouse's full of student data and basically can't do anything with it other than scare or congratulate schools annually based on the previous year's performance at best. Just disappointing how much money we waste on this standardized assessment while our kids lack books, computers and adequate staffing.
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