New York students could take their annual state tests on computers in 2017, according to a state document seeking bids for a contract to create new electronic English and math exams.
The five-year contract would begin in July, months before the state’s current $32 million contract with the testmaker Pearson expires in December. While the winning bidder would be required to create computer-based exams by spring 2017, schools will have the option to stick with the pencil-and-paper exams that students currently take in grades three through eight, the document adds.
That move further delays New York’s shift from print to computer-based tests, suggesting that many schools are not ready for the change.
State officials had previously planned to roll out computer-based tests this year, when a group of states will begin giving online exams tied to the Common Core standards. Officials later decided to hold off switching to the exams created by that group, called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC.
The state’s latest decision to develop its own computer-based tests indicates that officials have no immediate plans to adopt the PARCC exams, even as other states make the switch. Instead, schools will have several more years to prepare for New York’s own digital tests.
“It will be at the discretion of each school and revisable annually, as to whether they will administer by paper or computer or both,” according to the request for proposals posted by the state education department last week, which calls this a “voluntary shift.” It adds that the state does not know how many schools will initially switch to computer-based tests, but expects the number “will increase each school year of this contract,” which would extend to 2020.
New York has been planning to convert to computer-based tests since at least 2010, when it adopted the Common Core standards and joined PARCC. In 2012, State Education Commissioner John King told districts to prepare to give computer-based tests by 2015, when the consortium’s tests were to be ready. (PARCC received a $186 million federal grant to build the “next-generation” assessments, which the group hired Pearson to help develop.)
But the next year New York decided not to immediately switch to the PARCC tests, which will be available at first in both paper and online forms. The decision was partly because not all schools had the necessary technology or Internet bandwidth to give the online exams. But it was also because officials had paid Pearson to create a pencil-and-paper Common Core test just for New York, which students first took in 2013.
Now, as other states in the consortium take the online PARCC tests this year, New York students will continue taking the state’s printed Common Core test. State officials have not said if or when New York will adopt the PARCC tests, though one top official recently said the state has “no current plans” to use them. The state education department did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday.
New York City officials have expressed interest in converting to online exams ahead of the rest of the state. Last year, 95 city schools took trial versions of the PARCC tests.
Still, many schools do not have the necessary technology. Only a quarter of city schools currently have enough devices to administer the online test, officials said last April, and many of the devices schools do have are outdated. A city education department spokesman said Wednesday that a switch either to PARCC or the state’s own computer-based tests “will require a transition period of several years.”
Even as the state prepares to build its own new tests, it is still possible it could switch to PARCC eventually, said Jack Bierwirth, the superintendent of the Herricks school district on Long Island and co-chair of the Council of School Superintendents’ assessment subcommittee.
The state could relatively cheaply convert its current paper exams into computer-based versions that it could use temporarily, he said. That would give the state time to find a new education commissioner, wait to see if federal testing laws change, and then decide whether to adopt the PARCC tests, Bierwirth said.
“To me,” he said, “this all ends up being essentially a few years of an interim assessment while the dust settles.”
Geoff Decker contributed reporting.