The Texas Education Agency is penalizing the New Jersey-based company that develops and administers the state's controversial STAAR tests — to the tune of $20.7 million — over widespread logistical and technical issues reported with the spring administration, Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced Tuesday.
The problems caused thousands of students to lose answers to online standardized tests.
The education agency is slapping Educational Testing Services with $5.7 million in “liquidated damages” and also asking it to “invest $15 million of its own funds toward an action plan that addresses a number of areas of concern this past school year,” Morath said. Those areas include online testing and shipping, scoring of the tests and reporting results.
"I believe this combination of liquidated damages with an additional financial commitment from ETS reflects the correct balance of accountability for the recent past and safeguards for the future," Morath said in a statement.
This is the first year ETS has administered STAAR exams after the state scrapped its longtime contract with London-based Pearson Education. ETS's contract is for $340 million over four years.
School districts reported dozens of logistical and technical issues during the spring administrations of the state-required exams known as the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness, which fifth- and eighth-graders and high schoolers are supposed to pass before they can move on to the next grade or graduate. Scores also factor heavily into school district and campus accountability ratings.
Problems first surfaced in March, when school districts reported problems with online tests that caused students to lose answers. The computer glitch impacted more than 14,000 exams. That was followed by reports of exams being shipped to the wrong location and delays in scoring.
The issues prompted Morath to drop grade advancement consequences for fifth- and eighth-graders, and also exclude exams affected by the computer glitch from school accountability ratings. But despite pleas from school officials to throw out all scores for the purposes of rating schools, Morath has suggested the issues were not widespread or severe enough to do so.
ETS spent an additional $20 million providing support to school districts and charters as they attempted to resolve testing issues, according to an education agency news release. It noted that those costs will be assumed by the company and are "above and beyond" its state contract.
Disclosure: Educational Testing Service and Pearson have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. A complete list of Tribune donors and sponsors can be viewed here.
Read more about the contentious STAAR exams:
- After a group of parents sued the Texas Education Agency over the 2016 administration of STAAR exams, state lawyers argued they had no standing and asked the courts to drop the case. A Travis County district court judge has denied their request.
- More Texas school districts and charter schools are failing at performing well enough on the STAAR exam, though the number of individual campuses that received that label decreased.
- A special panel recommending changes to the state’s public school testing and accountability system stopped short of proposing that Texas scrap the controversial assessment regime known as STAAR.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2016/08/23/embattled-staar-vendor-facing-20-million-penalties/.
