October 20, 2014      5:58 PM
SBOE grills publishers over social studies textbooks
Three firms emerge in fight for assessment contract
The State Board of Education on Monday raised
questions about the content of a controversial round of social studies
textbooks.
Secondary math, too, is on the list for Proclamation 2015, but
it’s the specifics of history textbooks, and often US History, that took center
stage. At the same time, the agency scheduled an initial bidders conference across
the hall for a four-year assessment contract, which could top $400 million.
Initial letters of interest in the assessment contract were
due to the Texas Education Agency on Friday. The agency would not disclose
who had filed the documentation, calling it part of the bid process, but the
initial bidders meeting held some clues. The agency would offer no
confirmation, but consortia appear to have emerged led by three major testing
companies: McGraw Hill, the
non-profit Educational Testing Service and Pearson.
Only a handful of testing companies are large enough to
handle the Texas testing contract, which Pearson has held since standardized
testing was implemented in the mid-90s. The amount of the assessment contract,
half of what is spent on textbooks each biennium, will be one of the few
competitive contracts remaining for bid once the majority of states move to
Common Core and its common assessments.
By Kimberly Reeves
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