Arkansas schools will use the ACT college-entrance exam and the related ACT Aspire tests for the coming 2015-16 academic year, making it the third test change in three years.
The state Board of Education on Thursday voted 4-2 with two abstentions to use the ACT tests, severing ties with the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers -- a consortium of now seven states and the District of Columbia that came up with what are known as the PARCC exams.
Board members Jay Barth and Vicki Saviers, both of Little Rock, abstained from the vote.
"With three new members, this is probably one of the weightiest issues that have come before this body for quite some time," Education Commissioner Johnny Key said. "We must have an assessment for our students on an annual basis that meets the needs of Arkansas."
Key later said the state Department of Education will immediately begin negotiations with ACT Inc., based in Iowa City, Iowa. Department officials expect the cost to be about the same as the PARCC exams, between $8 million and $9 million.
Arkansas now joins Alabama, South Carolina and Wisconsin in contracting with ACT Inc. Alabama has administered the test for the past two years. South Carolina has used the ACT test for one year, but is currently rebidding for a test provider because a state procurement panel found that the earlier bidding process violated state law, according to media reports.
Under Thursday's motion by Education Board member Charisse Dean of Little Rock, the department can include optional interim assessments, or tests throughout the year, to better diagnose a student's shortcomings and address them.
"The ACT at 11th grade will be provided by the state but optional for students," the motion states. "ACT Aspire for grades 9 and 10 and the ACT would modify the End-of-Course standalone assessments to provide a comprehensive college and career readiness assessment system."
Thursday's vote ended a month-long standoff between the board and Gov. Asa Hutchinson on the testing matter. The state, under federal law, must have a testing program or it risks losing federal funding.
The governor applauded the board's decision, saying the vote demonstrated the body's "continued dedication" to putting students first.
"The board members were thoughtful and deliberate on this issue and reached a final decision that I think is best for our students and teachers over the long term," he said in a prepared statement. "It provides stability and aligns Arkansas with a nationally recognized testing system."
The Republican governor wanted Arkansas' 460,000 public school students to take the ACT and ACT Aspire tests. Aspire tests are in reading, writing, math and science for third grade through early high school.
Hutchinson's recommendation stemmed from conclusions reached by the Governor's Council on Common Core Review, a 16-member group made up of administrators, teachers, students and business leaders across the state and led by Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin.
On June 11, the state Education Board voted 7-1 against using the ACT and ACT Aspire tests, and instead stuck with the PARCC exams. At the time, the board was made up of appointees from Hutchinson's predecessor, Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat. Three board members have subsequently left.
Just 11 days later, Hutchinson directed the state Department of Education to end the contract with PARCC after a year. In a letter to Key, Hutchinson cited a 2010 multistate consortium memorandum of understanding that stated that a new governor needed to confirm the state's continued partnership, which he did not do.
"I was sworn in as the newly elected governor of Arkansas on January 13, 2015, and since I took office there has been no action by the Governor or the Commissioner of Education to reaffirm the State's continued commitment and participation in the PARCC consortium," Hutchinson wrote. "On the contrary, I have publicly expressed my support for withdrawing from PARCC."
On Wednesday, board members met with Education Department staff members for a work session on the testing issue. Many expressed concern and frustration about the speed with which the state was moving to a new test.
First, do no harm, board Chairman Toyce Newton of Crossett said at the time.
"You can't help but have some injury of some sort," board member Joe Black of Newport said then. "We need now to make a decision on what will do the least amount of harm for one calendar year."
Department staff members also recommended Wednesday that the state contract with ACT Inc.
On Thursday, the board -- with the three new appointees by Hutchinson -- voted to begin the sole-source contract negotiating process with ACT Inc. for the college-entrance exams for 11th-graders and the Aspire tests for third- through 10th-graders. The three new board members -- Dean, Susan Chambers of Bella Vista and Brett Williamson of El Dorado -- along with Black voted for switching to the ACT and ACT Aspire tests.
Diane Zook of Melbourne and Mireya Reith of Fayetteville voted against using the ACT and ACT Aspire exams.
Switching to the new tests required a majority of votes from board members, or at least five votes. However, with the two abstentions, the majority threshold became four votes.
The board's options Thursday consisted of directing the department to enter into a sole-source contract with a test provider; to seek bids from test providers; or to pick a test provider for this school year while continuing to look for a provider for subsequent years.
Entering into a sole-source contract is the quickest option because it forgoes having to take competitive bids.
Regardless of the option chose, the contract with a testing vendor must be approved by the governor's office and a state legislative review council.
"We've been in the trenches in assessment for years," Saviers said. "This is the first time in my 20-some-odd-year experience in education seeing an assessment be created and developed in this manner -- without a procurement process, without the ability for educators across the state to really weigh in and ask questions, without the benefit of us seeing and hearing from the technical advisory committee, without understanding what the pros and cons are of other tests that may be similar or might be better.
"We literally were handed one option and then basically told that if we don't do this option, it will be our fault if we don't have an assessment."
Had the board not chosen a test and the impasse continued, the state would have been at risk of losing some $582 million in federal funding and would be in violation of federal law.
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 requires states to administer math and literacy tests in grades three through high school. The results of those tests help evaluate the performance of schools and school districts, track student learning and contribute to teacher evaluations.
Saviers said the board was told that any test, other than the ACT Aspire exam, would not meet with the approval of legislative review committee.
"We really did understand what the implications were," she said.
There is no real alignment with the ACT Aspire tests and the Common Core State Standards, she said. A majority of the 50 states, including Arkansas, adopted the 2010 standards in math and English/language arts, and then had to find or develop tests that aligned with those standards in order to comply with federal law.
If the board had decided to use a bid-procurement process, that would have given the state leverage in negotiating with the test providers, she said. Given that the state has had three tests in three years, she said, she has serious questions about equity, especially for "our most vulnerable children." She was also concerned that the board had a such short time to consider the matter.
"My heart is clearly against the motion," Saviers said Thursday, ahead of the vote. "But my mind is saying, 'So what if the motion fails?' Then what happens? I feel just in a corner."
Barth agreed.
The new exam has some positives, including testing science at all grade levels and having interim assessments versus one end-of-the-year exam, he said. Interim assessments will give teachers more opportunity for assessing students' learning earlier and intervening to help them earlier, department officials said.
But, Barth said he was concerned about the ACT Aspire test's validity and reliability. He wanted to have a test similar to PARCC for the coming year, while the state began a competitive bidding process to find other testing vendors. That option wasn't on the table, he said.
"If I had more time, I might could get there on ACT Aspire," he said. "But I couldn't get there last night, and I'm still not there today."
Barth later said he decided to abstain in the voting to try to "make the best of a pretty bad situation."
Zook wanted to administer the PARCC tests for another year, while the Education Department started a competitive bidding process for a different test. Legislators earlier this year had sought to get rid of the PARCC tests, but ultimately decided to compromise and keep the PARCC exams for the coming year, she said.
"I am not advocating for one test or another, but I am advocating for time," she said. "I'm advocating that we give an opportunity to the new board members to look at it more thoroughly."
To hurry to act, she said, would not serve anyone.
"I want it to be a good, solid test that works and stays with the Arkansas standards that we've adopted," she said.
Time is not a luxury the board has, Dean said.
"We want to make the best decision for the students and the teachers of Arkansas that will do the least amount of harm," said Dean, who was in the 16-member Common Core review group. "In that situation that we're in, it seems to be from the facts and from the evidence that the best decision right now is to go with ACT Aspire."
The board also heard from four members of the public. Three, including former Education Board member Alice Mahony of El Dorado -- who was the only member at the last meeting to vote to switch to the ACT tests -- asked the board to ditch the PARCC test. One person favored keeping the PARCC exam.
The ACT Aspire test is online, as is the PARCC exam, but it takes four hours to complete instead of the PARCC exam, which takes more than twice that amount of time.
That allows for more instructional time, said Deborah Jones, the department's assistant commissioner for learning services.
The ACT exam also would create annual science assessments for third- through 10th-graders, which could bolster science, technology, engineering and math education, she said. The state used to test for science at the fifth- and seventh-grade levels.
The department will seek to include interim assessments in the terms of the contract with the testing company. Those interim assessments will be made available to districts that choose to use them. In the past, school districts had to pay for interim assessments out of their own pockets.
Jones said that given the importance of the ACT college-entrance exam, switching to ACT Aspire exams in pre-college education would add relevance for students and parents.
The new testing does not evaluate on just one standard. Instead, it evaluates in regard to domains, or clusters of standards, that are similar to those in Common Core, she said, adding that the test would be more in alignment with Arkansas standards.
Jones said she hopes to address some of the Education Board members' concerns over the ACT tests when negotiating the contract. Those concerns included determining who owns the testing data, getting third-party verification that the tests align with Arkansas standards and making accommodations for students with disabilities.
"I think it's a win-win, while the process was very difficult for the board," she said. "I think that they elected to do the best thing for the state today. Parents and students and schools win in the process. They needed stability, and I think the state board provided stability today."