The State Education Department has decided to sever its ties with the company that's produced the high-stakes, and controversial, statewide English and math tests. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed the following report.
Publishing giant Pearson has failed the test.
Since 2012, Pearson has been the focus of protests, anger and frustration as a growing number of teachers and parents have turned against standardized testing in general, and the company in particular.
The state announced Thursday that it will hire a new company to produce the high-stakes standardized tests given to elementary- and middle-school students across New York.
Questar Assessment Inc. beat out three other bidders, including Pearson, to create the exams over the next five years at a cost of $44 million, which is $12 million more than Pearson received under a five-year contract that ends in December.
"We have to make sure that those assessments are appropriate and that they're used to support students and teachers," said State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia.
The new contract is the first announcement made by Elia, who began work on Monday and has been charged with regaining parents' and teachers' trust in the testing program.
Pearson ran into problems in the first year of its contract, when nearly 30 test questions had to be scrapped because they were faulty.
"These inexcusable errors, from typographical to translation to a nonsense question," State Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said in 2012.
The most infamous of those questions was a bizarre reading passage where the moral the story was that pineapples don't have sleeves.
"That article about the pineapple and the hare was stupid and absurd," one student said at the time.
Other states, including Ohio, Florida and Indiana, have also recently dropped Pearson's testing services.
In New York, the anti-standardized testing movement is particularly powerful, with about 200,000 families refusing to allow their children to take the tests this year.
"Parents need to understand the work that's being done," Elia said.
If it's approved by the state attorney general and comptroller, the new contract with Questar will begin this month.