Patience tested by FCAT delays

National Computer Systems Inc.'s delay in returning tests results has school and state officials considering penalties and alternative companies.

By STEPHEN HEGARTY

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 28, 2000

Gov. Jeb Bush, frustrated at the expected late return of the FCAT test scores that form the underpinnings of his schools accountability package, wants to see students take the test later and get results sooner.

"It just seems to me we ought to be able to push the test closer to the end of the year and get it back sooner," Bush said. "I think that's something we can do."

Bush and others are frustrated that results from the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test are expected later than ever this year, and uneasy about the trend toward districts starting school earlier and earlier.

"Districts are starting school earlier so they can get in as much instructional time as possible before the FCAT," said Wayne Blanton, executive director for the Florida School Boards Association. Several districts, including Hernando, Hillsborough and Pasco, are starting school in the first two weeks of August. The day that many see as the traditional start of school, Labor Day, is Sept. 4.

"It's getting ridiculous," Blanton said. "If we can push the test back a little and still get the results back on time, I'm all for it. And if this testing company can't do it, maybe we should look at another company."

Education Commissioner Tom Gallagher also likes the proposal.

"There would be obstacles, but that's what we're working toward," said Florida Department of Education spokeswoman Karen Chandler.

Blanton and others are losing patience with National Computer Systems Inc., the company that has fallen behind in scoring the FCAT.

Initially, the test scores were supposed to be delivered to school districts by May 10. But after a delay due to a challenge of the contract, the date was pushed back to June 2 -- too late for Hillsborough County, where school ended May 24, but in plenty of time for most districts.

(After the contract challenge, NCS won the three-year, $69-million contract. There is an option to renew for two more years, which would bring the contract up to $122-million.)

Now that the scores are all but certain to be late -- delivery is now expected on or about June 19 -- school districts are making plans to spend money and send test results home to families. In Hillsborough County, the estimated cost for the mailing will be about $40,000. In Pasco, the estimate is about $10,000.

Blanton said he sees a logical way to offset those costs: liquidated damages from the testing company.

The contract with NCS calls for damages to be paid if the company defaults on an "extremely critical work task." The contract calls for $10,000 to be paid if the default is not corrected after one day, $30,000 for two days, and $60,000 for three. If the default is not corrected after seven days, the penalty is $250,000 each day after.

Assuming that a delay in the delivery of test scores qualifies as a default under the contract, and assuming the scores come in on June 19, counting only the business days, NCS would be liable to pay $1.7-million.

Because the scores aren't late yet, Gallagher isn't yet talking about collecting money from NCS.

"He won't do that because they're not late yet," Blanton said. "But we're going to really hold the contractor's feet to the fire. We think that money should be applied to the costs incurred by the school districts. It's not the districts' fault.

"That's if and when we can collect the damages -- and that's the big question."

Frustrating as the delay is, evidently it is not uncommon. To hear the state's director of testing tell it, scoring thousands upon thousands of FCAT answer sheets amounts to a study in Murphy's Law.

"There have always been difficulties of one kind or another with every contractor we've ever worked with, and I've been doing this for 30 years," said Tom Fisher, the testing director. "It's because of the mammoth size and mammoth complexity of the job."

Other states have had similar problems, with this testing company and with others.

Last year, NCS was late in delivering test results in Michigan and when they were delivered, roughly 15 percent of the science scores were incorrect.

"We had computer glitches, things needing to be redone, missed deadlines," said Brad Wurfel, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Education.

In Arizona, NCS incorrectly scored a question on the 1999 math test, a slip that affected the scores of 12,000 students, said Arizona Department of Education spokeswoman Laura Penny.

Officials with NCS did not return phone calls for this story.

Florida's delay is being blamed on the late start of testing because of the contract challenge, and on the difficulty of finding qualified people to score the tests.

The FCAT is not exclusively a fill-in-the-bubble test that could be scored electronically. Many test answers require written responses, which must be read by at least two scorers. Fisher estimated that amounted to roughly 23-million "reads."

"That's a lot of stuff to read," Fisher said. "And when the company started staffing up, they ran smack into the full-employment economy. They didn't have enough people."

The difficulties with finding readers will also present difficulties if Bush is to get his way in compressing the time between the taking of the test and the return of the test scores.

To speed up the test-scoring process, the state would have to change the nature of the test (which is unlikely), or spend more money to find more readers and test scorers.

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