Education Week - August 7, 2013 - 21

EDUCATION WEEK AUGUST 7, 2013 www.edweek.org
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test will cost the state much more
than current estimates suggest. Testifying
before the legislature, he said
that assumptions about cost savings
from computer administration and
scoring, and from teacher scoring,
are inflated, and that the real cost of
the test there could be closer to $39
per student.
Different Models
While PARCC’s pricing offers just
one fee and set of services, Smarter
Balanced offers two pricing levels.
It will be responsible for providing
some services, such as developing
test items and producing standardized
reports of results, and states
are responsible for others, including
scoring the tests. Smarter Balanced
states could opt to score their
tests in various ways, such as hiring
a vendor or training and paying
teachers as scorers, or combining
those methods. SBAC will design
guidelines intended to make scoring
consistent, said Tony Alpert, the
consortium’s chief operating officer.
Smarter Balanced’s cost projections
include what states pay the
consortium for services and what
they should expect to spend for
services they—or vendors—provide.
For instance, the $22.50 cost
of the “basic” system is made up of
$6.20 for consortium services and
$16.30 for state-managed services.
The $27.30 cost of the “complete
system,” which includes interim
and formative tests, breaks down to
$9.55 for consortium services and
$17.75 for state-managed services.
In PARCC, the consortium, rather
than individual states, will score
the tests, according to spokesman
Chad Colby. PARCC’s pricing
includes only the two pieces of its
summative tests: its performancebased
assessment, which is given
about three-quarters of the way
through the school year, and its
end-of-year test, given about 90
percent of the way through the
school year.
Its price does not include three
tests that PARCC is also designing:
a test of speaking and listening
skills, which states are required
to give but don’t have to use for
federal accountability; an optional
midyear exam; and an optional
diagnostic test given at the beginning
of the school year. Pricing for
those tests will be issued later, according
to Mr. Colby.
Paper-and-pencil versions of the
PARCC tests, which will be available
for at least the first year of
administration, will cost $3 to $4
more per student than the online
version, according to a document
prepared by the consortium.
A Value Proposition?
State spending on assessment
varies widely, so states find themselves
in a range of positions politically
as they anticipate moving
to new tests.
Figures compiled for the two consortia’s
federal grant applications
in 2010 show that in SBAC, some
states paid as little as $9 per student
(North Carolina) for math and
English/language arts tests, while
others paid as much as $63.50 (Del-
aware) and $69 (Maine). One state,
Hawaii, reported spending $116 per
student. In the PARCC consortium,
per-student, combined costs for
math and English/language arts
tests ranged from $10.70 (Georgia)
to $61.24 (Maryland), with a median
of $27.78.
Comparing what one state
spends on tests to what another
spends—and comparing current
spending to what PARCC or Smarter
Balanced tests could cost—is difficult
for many reasons. One is that
states bundle their test costs differently.
Some states’ cost figures
include scoring the tests; others do
not. Some states’ figures include
tests in other subjects, such as
science. Some states’ figures lack
a subject that the two consortia’s
tests will cover: writing.
Most states’ tests are primar-
ily or exclusively multiple choice,
which are cheaper to administer
and score. Some give more constructed-response
or essay questions,
making the tests costlier to
score but of greater value in gauging
student understanding, many
educators believe.
Matthew M. Chingos, a Brookings
Institution fellow who studied
state spending on assessment
last year, said he is not yet sure
the consortia’s pricing will prove
accurate.
“What are these numbers based
on? There’s no way for anyone to
verify the work yet,” he said. “People
need to be skeptical of anyone
who says they know what this is
going to cost until [the consortia]
are further down the road.”
Edward Roeber, a former Michigan
assessment director who is
now a consultant for various assessment
projects, said he is concerned
that states that choose to
withdraw from consortia work
now face paying more to develop
tests on their own because they
won’t benefit from the economies
of scale that consortium work can
offer. That added cost down the
road, he said, could lead states to
buy cheaper, less instructionally
useful assessments.
The two consortia are keenly
aware that states might find it difficult
to win support for the new
tests if they represent increases in
cost or test-taking time. They are
taking pains to point out what they
see as the value their tests will add
compared with current state tests.
A Power Point presentation assembled
by PARCC, for instance,
notes that its tests will offer separate
reading and writing scores at
every grade level, something few
state tests currently do. It says
educators will get results from its
end-of-year and performance-based
tests by the end of the school year,
while in many states, it’s common
for test results to come back in
summer, and even, in some cases,
the following fall. Echoing an argument
its officials have made
for many months, the PARCC presentation
says that its tests will
be “worth taking,” since the questions
will be complex and engaging
enough to be viewed as “extensions
of quality coursework.”
It also seeks to make the point
that $29.50 isn’t a lot to spend on a
21
test, noting that it’s about the same
as “a movie date” or “dinner for four
at a fast-food restaurant,” and less
than what it costs to fill the gas
tank of a large car half full.
Mr. Alpert of Smarter Balanced
noted many of the same points, as
well as the “flexibility” of SBAC’s
decentralized approach to scoring
and administration, which offers
states many options for how much
to do themselves and how much to
have vendors do. If states choose
to draw heavily on teachers for
scoring, he said, they derive an important
professional-development
value from that.
“Comparing costs isn’t really
accurate,” he said. “States will be
buying new things. It’s like comparing
the cost of a bicycle to the
cost of a car. A car costs more, but
what are you buying? [Smarter
Balanced tests] are definitely a
better value and a better service.
They’re going to give teachers
and policymakers the information
they’ve been asking for.”
The role of artificial intelligence
in scoring tests remains an open
question in both consortia. If
they determine that it is reliable
enough to play a large role in scoring,
test costs could decline.
Quality Versus Cost
In Massachusetts, cost isn’t the
most important factor in looking
ahead to new tests, since the
state currently spends more than
the PARCC tests are projected to
cost, said education Commissioner
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Education Week - August 7, 2013

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