Nevada chooses new school-test overseer after assessment woes

By Ian Whitaker

Tuesday, July 14, 2015 | 5:20 p.m.

The testing company at the helm of Nevada's disastrous Common Core assessments this year is set to lose its decade-long contract with the state.

Measured Progress’ contract to administer Nevada’s standardized tests, which expired this year, was awarded to McGraw-Hill last week in a competitive bidding process, according to the state purchasing office. The deal will be official once it passes a vote by the Board of Examiners next month.

McGraw-Hill competed with 11 other testing companies, including testing giant Pearson, for the four-year, $51 million contract. Measured Progress came in at seventh place during the contract scoring process, suffering low scores in the “demonstrated competence” category. The contract covers every test in elementary through high school with the exception of the ACT.

“Our hope is that it’s an absolutely seamless transition,” said state Superintendent Dale Erquiaga.

While McGraw-Hill won the months-long bidding process, it actually sold its testing operations at the beginning of this month to another company, Data Recognition Corporation. State officials told Education Week that they would move to transfer the contract to DRC's name.

Erquiaga had been one of the most vocal critics of Measured Progress following the company’s technical meltdown during the rollout of the new Smarter Balanced online test in April.

The large number of students logging in to take the Common Core-aligned test overloaded the company’s servers, causing outages and delays statewide. Most counties emerged from the months-long testing window having tested most of their students, but in Clark County, only around 5 percent of eligible students completed the test. That meant Nevada was nowhere close to testing 95 percent of its students, which is required by federal law.

In the aftermath, Measured Progress CEO Martin Borg said the testing problems were the result of delays in receiving vital computer code from American Institutes for Research, the testing company whose software the computerized Smarter Balanced test is based on. AIR said there were only “minimal delays.”

“The most important piece to us after our recent experience is ensuring we deliver a quality testing experience to our kids and teachers,” Erquiaga said. “We want to be sure we have a vendor who can deliver.”

Measured Progress has another week to appeal the decision, but as of Tuesday there had been so signs the company was planning to do so, according to a spokeswoman for the Nevada Department of Education.