New High School Exams in the Works

To the relief of the California Department of Education, three test publishers said Monday they were submitting proposals to develop a new high school graduation exam for the Class of 2004.

“We’re enthusiastic about receiving some informal bids,” said Doug Stone, a department spokesman. “We plan to evaluate the proposals, make a decision shortly and move forward so we are able to meet the statutory timelines.”

The three companies are Harcourt Educational Measurement of San Antonio, developer of the Stanford 9 standardized test that is given annually to most California public school students; CTB/McGraw-Hill of Monterey; and American Institutes for Research, or AIR, a Washington research company that is expanding its test development.

Harcourt and CTB/McGraw-Hill are among the nation’s three largest test publishers. Another large rival, Houghton Mifflin Co., declined to submit a bid.

“We did not feel there was sufficient time to be as thorough as we thought the state deserved,” said Maureen DiMarco, Houghton Mifflin’s vice president for educational and governmental affairs.

National Computer Systems of Eden Prairie, Minn., a subcontractor on the Stanford 9, declined to confirm or deny it was bidding.

Publishers have complained about the short time frame for developing and implementing an exam, which Gov. Gray Davis views as a key component of his efforts to make schools, teachers and students accountable for academic achievement.

Last month, after a formal bidding process, not a single publisher asked for the job. Most said the schedule did not allow enough time to put together and field-test thousands of items and then to administer the test to freshmen in the 2000-01 school year.

Students would have several opportunities throughout their high school years to take the exam. They would have to pass it to receive a high school diploma.

Even as they threw their hats into the ring, publishers remained puzzled about some details of the state’s demands. In particular, they were flummoxed about how much money was available for the task.

In its initial request for bids, the department specified a total of $1.8 million. But the memo that went out late last week, soliciting informal bids for “short-term” and “long-term” proposals for the exam, did not mention an amount.

Beverly Farr, AIR’s deputy director for education and human development, said her company understood from the department that $1.8 million would cover “more or less the first year’s operation”--including question development and field-testing but not the first formal administration.

Farr, based in Palo Alto, said AIR excels at research and technical support. AIR has done much of the work on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a well-regarded exam given to students nationwide.

Harcourt’s Robert Rayborn, director for the California STAR program, said a dollar figure was “the missing piece.” He said the company’s bid provided both a short-term and a long-term solution, and he implied that Harcourt came in at more than $1.8 million.

“We’ve taken a different tack,” he said. “Maybe it’s the wrong one.”