In a June 9 letter to New Mexico’s state purchasing agent obtained and published by Education Week, here, the New Mexico Public Education Department’s general counsel, Dan Hill, writes, in the first sentence of the introduction:
As New Mexico works to reform our K-12 education system, frivolous protests by businesses looking to gain market share should first be examined for the affect [sic] they will have the [sic] State’s students and educators.
Nothing says “sloppiness” like a misspelling or missing words! I’ve made more than my fair share of misspellings, but this is a blog. The quote above is from a letter approved by the general counsel of a state department of education.
As we reported, a state judge called the wording of certain portions of New Mexico’s request for proposals for the PARCC tests “ambiguous” and found the state’s quick dismissal of a protest over bundling made by the American Institutes for Research to be in violation of its own “substantial” processes. Pearson was awarded the contract for question development, online and paper-and-pencil delivery, scoring, and analysis of student performance for PARCC.
Mr Hill’s eight-page letter was written to push back against the protest, claiming that irreparable harm will be caused if PARCC’s work with Pearson is not allowed to move forward. Important deadlines will be missed that jeopardize Pearson’s and PARCC’s ability to deliver tests in the fall, the letter goes on to say.
Only Pearson submitted a bid under the RFP, which the AIR claimed was slanted unfairly in favor of Pearson. New Mexico’s purchasing agent, Lawrence O Maxwell, had until June 18 to file a written response as to the merits of AIR’s protest. The AIR then has until June 25 (tomorrow) to file its response with Judge Sarah M Singleton, who ordered the technical dismissal of the AIR’s protest reversed.
“We believe bureaucratic obstacles like the one put forth by AIR only work to stymie student progress in New Mexico,” Mr Hill’s letter continues. In this part, at least the words are spelled correctly. “AIR’s protest is devoid of substance and is centered on its interest, not those of our students.”
While I may agree with Mr Hill’s conclusions, I find it unprofessional to send out a letter from a state agency that has not been checked for spelling. The contract is valued at more than $1 billion, and New Mexico officials seem to be treating it like some kind of purchase order. This dismissive sloppiness cannot persist.
I hope you realize there are more than a dozen states watching this. We in Maryland, Illinois, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Ohio, Arizona, et al, are unable to finalize any agreements in terms of testing until this matter is resolved. Furthermore, important deadlines are coming and going, so the amount of work that will have to be done in catching up is getting worse by the day. And if this matter isn’t resolved soon, the quality of the final output will suffer.
For example, states may not be able to iron out the seemingly random errors that occurred in Pearson’s TestNav test-delivery system online. Some online testing went smoothly, but other computer testers, sometimes in the same school, were locked out with random error messages, unable to take the test.
If such a disaster happens when the tests count this fall … GAME OVER. You will have governors, state legislatures, corporations, parents, teachers, and students protesting in the streets if the first operational year for the PARCC assessments doesn’t go fairly smoothly. And the delays, where everything is getting pushed back, are taking us perilously close to the administration of the Performance Based Assessment in the fall for schools that use a semester (4×4) block schedule.
This matter needs to be resolved, and New Mexico officials, who can’t even get their spelling right in some cases, are holding the ball. You can’t make this stuff up.