DOE to spend millions of dollars on new local assessments, starting in preK?
The DOE released a new set of RFP’s totesting companies to develop yet another set of “local assessments” to be given starting next year. [Apparentlythe 408assessments bid out in July did not result in any contracts.] The bids aredue April 23. The announcement says that24 contracts could result, for God knows how many millions of dollars.
It is unclear how many local assessments willresult from all these new contracts, but probably hundreds over three years. Thereare 23 testing “components” in all; with each component involving a "gradespan" and a content area, and 40 items in each test, probably to be taken on computers, which will involve yet more millions to provide.
The DOE is pitching this new set of RFP’s as for new sets of “diagnostic” and “interim”assessments, but the only required part of the RFP is “end of course” exams,which is very difficult to argue is “diagnostic” since there