Oklahoma may ask beleaguered test vendor CTB/McGraw-Hill to come back months after firing the company for a second consecutive year of testing troubles.
State Department of Education spokesman Phil Bacharach said the state Board of Education will be asked Thursday to approve a $2.8 million contract with CTB/McGraw-Hill to handle winter testing because no other company is willing to do it.
CTB/McGraw-Hill received $7.3 million to administer online testing for middle school students, and $6.2 million to administer end-of-instruction tests for high school students last school year before its contract was canceled.
The short time frame to create a new test, coupled with the changes made to the state’s academic standards, scared potential vendors away, Bacharach said.
That meant the only choices were to ask CTB/McGraw-Hill to return or to skip the required winter testing.
“It was definitely awkward going back to them,” Bacharach said. “I’ve heard they’ve been fairly easy to work with. I think they want to leave on a high note.”
If the contract is approved, CTB/McGraw-Hill would only handle winter testing, and a new vendor should be in place by spring, Bacharach said.
The state gave about 51,000 end-of-instruction tests last winter.
It was not immediately known if CTB/McGraw-Hill made any assurances that there would be no more testing problems if it were rehired. The company's contract wasn't renewed in June after a hardware failure prevented nearly 8,100 students from finishing their exams during one day of testing in April.
That was not the first time the state had encountered problems with CTB/McGraw-Hill.
Server problems disrupted testing in April 2013 as students in both Indiana and Oklahoma tried to get online for their exams.
