Cost of Common Core tests millions more than expected

The increased price tag comes at a time when states are preparing their students for new tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards and an effort by local GOP lawmakers to diminish the standards and offer schools a way to opt out of taking the tests picked by the state.

The Department of Public Instruction is asking for $17.9 million for the 2015-16 school year and $18.5 million for the 2016-17 school year to pay for administering the tests, according to DPI’s 2015-17 budget request. That is about $3.26 million and $3.96 million more, respectively, than what is appropriated already.

Currently, the state has committed about $14.6 million for state assessments for those years, according to DPI.

The numbers could change because the budget request is based on an “intent agreement” that DPI entered into with the test’s vendor, Educational Testing Service. DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said the costs could go up or down once the final contract is ironed out.

The contract is being negotiated by the Department of Administration, he said. A spokeswoman did not return a Friday phone call seeking comment about the status of the contract.

A spokeswoman for Gov. Scott Walker wouldn’t comment on whether he supports fully funding the new assessments, saying Walker would review the budget request.

The requested amount covers the Smarter Balanced exam, which was recently renamed The Badger Exam, for students in grades three through eight, and the ACT suite of tests for high school students that includes the ASPIRE, ACT and WorkKeys exams. It also includes the Dynamic Learning Maps exam for students with disabilities.

One of two pieces of legislation moving through the Legislature calling for new school accountability measures also asks that schools be given an option of tests to use instead of requiring them to use the Common Core-aligned tests. Walker has repeatedly expressed a distaste for the Common Core standards, and has in the past called for their full repeal before softening his stance more recently.

“What you’re dealing with is actual numbers versus estimates,” said Luci Willits, deputy director of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, which built a test Wisconsin and 17 other states are using this year to measure how well their students in grades three through eight are meeting the new academic standards the state adopted in 2010.

When the consortium was created, nearly 30 states had signed up to use the tests, but the number has dropped over the years as more states rethink how they will assess their students or abandon the Common Core standards altogether.

Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt, R-Fond du Lac, Assembly Education Committee chairman, said at a hearing this week that he thinks the costs are rising partially because some states are no longer using the test.

Senate Education Reform and Government Operations committee chairman Paul Farrow, R-Pewaukee, echoed those concerns in an interview, but Senate Education Committee chairman Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, said he attributes the higher-than-expected cost largely to the nature of the new tests, which are Web-based and adaptive, compared to the state’s previous tests.

Willits said the smaller group of states now in the consortium did not have an affect on price to states remaining in the consortium.

“When the consortium started four years ago, there would be certain estimates about what it would cost between the consortium and vendors in terms of delivery and that’s what I think Wisconsin is dealing with — now that they have actual numbers,” she said.

According to the DPI’s budget request, the cost of administering the Smarter Balanced exam has risen from $26 to $33.64 per student. The DPI is expecting to spend $1.5 million more than it has allocated for those tests in 2015, according to the request, and is asking for $1.2 million more in 2016 and about $911,000 in 2017 to fully pay for the tests that are given to students in grades three through eight.

Those figures are based on testing about 62,500 students in grades three, four and eight, including new requirements to test students attending private voucher schools.

Although McCarthy said a final contract is still being negotiated, the budget request called the new estimates reliable.

“With a contract in hand for the three through eight assessment for the next four years, the Department is confident in these cost estimates,” it said.

The state’s contract with its vendor accounts for the bulk of the costs, and the state also pays about $1.9 million annually to belong to the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.

The cost of administering the ACT suite of tests for high school students also is higher than expected, by $1.6 million in 2016 and $2.6 million in 2017, though DPI also requested to stop using one of the ninth grade ASPIRE assessments, which would decrease the outstanding amount if approved.

If the state does not fully fund DPI’s request, McCarthy said he was unsure what would happen to its contract with the test’s vendor. Writing a new test could take a lot of time and be costly, he said, and he noted the state is required to have a test aligned to the state’s adopted standards.

Farrow, chairman of the Senate’s committee on education reform and government options, said he favors discussing whether the state should pick a different test before committing the funding for the next three years.

“If we’re finding it’s now too cost-prohibitive, I don’t want to put all these eggs into this basket,” he said. “I would rather find an alternative to be truly fiscally efficient.”

The first two years of the contract with ETS are expected to cost more than it will going forward “due to the startup costs associated with the transition to the new assessment,” according to DPI.

The cost per student should decrease slightly to $30.10 per student after the 2016-17 school year, according to DPI.