ETS wins $35 million contract

To develop test for state’s third- and fourth-graders.

By: Jeff Milgram
   Educational Testing Service of Lawrence has been awarded a four-year, $35.3 million contract to develop standardized reading and math tests that will be given to New Jersey’s third- and fourth-graders starting this spring.
   This would be the first time ETS has entered the field of elementary school testing in New Jersey, but the company, known for its college-level testing, is no stranger to assessment at that level.
   "It’s a new area of emphasis for our company," said Tom Ewing, the company’s director of external communications.
   "I am extremely proud that we won this contract," said Kurt Landgraf, president and CEO of ETS. "It is especially meaningful to win such a significant project from our home state. We look forward to working with Gov. (James E.) McGreevey and Commissioner of Education (William L.) Librera to ensure our tests meet New Jersey’s needs and thank them for entrusting this important task to ETS."
   The New Jersey contract is the third testing program ETS will manage to help states and territories comply with the federal No Child Left Behind Act, after those in California and Puerto Rico. In addition, ETS is a test-development subcontractor to NCS Pearson for K-12 testing programs in Georgia and Florida. ETS also has won a high-school testing contract with Maryland.
   "We also do practically all the testing in the state of California," Mr. Ewing said.
   ETS beat out three other companies for the New Jersey contract. An evaluation panel at the state Department of Education concluded that of four bidders, only ETS proposed an assessment program that would align with and measure New Jersey’s Core Curriculum Content Standards.
   The panel concluded that to award any of the other three bidders a four-year contact for testing in grades three and four in language arts literacy and mathematics would constitute a retreat from the state’s commitment to standards-based education.
   "We’ve earned a lot of new business in the last two years, and every one of those contracts has been hard-won and gratifying," said John Oswald, vice president of ETS’s K-12 Assessments Division, which prepared the bid. "This project is yet another confirmation of our central place in the K-12 market, and it is another step toward our goal of becoming the leader in that market."
   The contract calls for ETS to develop and score new third- and fourth-grade language arts literacy and mathematics tests for 105,000 students in the first year and 110,000 students in the subsequent three years starting this spring.
   The contract also requires ETS to develop and score a fourth-grade science assessment for 110,000 students beginning in the spring of 2004.
   The total contract, $35.3 million, is less than the current costs of the fourth-grade Elementary School Proficiency Assessment the new test will replace, state Education Department officials said.
   The contract also requires Spanish-language versions of the tests to accommodate approximately 2,500 limited-English-proficiency students.
   Working with two subcontractors, ETS will be responsible for overall project direction, test assembly, psychometrics, publishing and distribution, scoring and quality control of all processes. The subcontractors are Riverside Publishing Co. of Illinois, which will develop the test items aligned with state standards and provide already existing items for the first year’s assessment, and The Grow Network of New York City, which will work with ETS to develop state-of-the-art reporting for the program. The Grow Network has experience with large-scale assessments including a subcontract with ETS for reporting under the California STAR program.
   The assessments represent the first phase of the state Department of Education’s plans to meet the assessment requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates testing in literacy and math in grades three through eight and 10 through 12 by the 2005-2006 school year.