Why the Jindal Loss Was Expected Regarding La.’s PARCC Injunction
On August 19, 2014, District Judge Todd Hernandez ruled that the Jindal administration’s suspension of the Louisiana state testing contract was to be temporarily lifted until the pro-Common Core (CCSS) full case against Jindal and his administration goes to court. (For backstory, click here.)
I was surprised at the judge’s ruling because the Louisiana Department of Education(LDOE) spliced the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) assessment into an already-existing “sole source” testing contract with Data Recognition Corp (DRC).
Pearson has been awarded the PARCC assessment contract, not DRC.
It is possible that Pearson hire DRC as a PARCC subcontractor. As it is, DRC has been hired as part of a team to develop assessments for the other federally-funded consortium, Smarter Balanced. However, there is no way that DRC is the sole source for PARCC.
This means that Louisiana will fund an extra vendor (DRC) in its not-so-“sole source” procurement of PARCC.
Testing contract laundering.
Thus, the judge’s decision surprised me.
However, I have read pertinent sections of the court ruling, and it seems that Jindal’s attorneys tried to let the contracts “speak for themselves.” Thus, the judge appears to have missed the John White sleight-of-contract in grafting PARCC into what was supposed to be a contract used by DRC for transition to PARCC.
Consider this statement from the ruling:
Evidence presented proves there was much discussion among [the state board of education, the Division of Administration--DOA, and the Office of Contractual Review--OCR] relating to the contract with Data Recognition Corp (DRC) and its status as “Sole Source” vendor for the implementation of common core. This evidence indicates this activity took place as far back as December, 2010. The contract with DRC was eventually approved as a “SingleWhy the Jindal Loss Was Expected Regarding La.’s PARCC Injunction | deutsch29:
