State Board of Education members voted Thursday to table any action on rehiring a previously fired testing vendor for the upcoming winter testing period.
State Superintendent Janet Barresi said Thursday morning prior to the discussion that rehiring the testing vendor was “unavoidable.”
“It is indeed frustrating that we are in this situation,” Barresi said.
The State Board of Education ended its contract with CTB/McGraw-Hill earlier this summer after two years of testing disruptions.
The board has no choice but to rehire the testing vendor for the winter testing period because there was not enough time to put the contract up for a bid, Barresi said.
“The other option would be to deny thousands of high school students the opportunity to take the EOI (end-of-instruction) tests,” she said. “It’s not an ideal situation but circumstances made this unavoidable.”
Board members unanimously rejected those notions, opting instead to delay any action until more information was available.
The no-bid testing contract with CTB/McGraw-Hill was to include end-of-instruction exams in seven core high school courses and some alternate testing for disabled students.
Department of Education spokesman Phil Bacharach said a special meeting will take place sometime within the next two weeks. He didn’t know what other choices the board would have, but said not doing winter testing could be one.
“It’s definitely an option, but I will not speculate on what the board will do,” Bacharach said.
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