What's in Texas' $500 Million Testing Contract with Pearson?
By any measure, Texas’ contract with standardized testing company Pearson is gigantic.
The state’s latest agreement covers five years of testing (2010-2015), and costs nearly half a billion dollars. For about $90 million per year, the State of Texas receives a battery of tests, and the top-to-bottom services those tests require.
By the time a current student in Texas public schools graduates, she will have taken at least fifteen standardized tests. This means Texas has the most frequently tested students in the nation.
Even if that number is reduced, the prices for test creation, test management, packaging, distribution and scoring will remain substantial.
It was not always so. In 2000, as the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (or TAKS) test dawned, the state’s contract with Pearson was worth about $9.5 million. But as the federal No Child Left Behind education policies took effect, standardized tests increased in both number and