Commissioner of Education Pam Stewart said Friday the Florida Department of Education will be seeking monetary damages from American Institutes for Research over this year’s technical difficulties with the Florida Standards Assessment.
“We’ll be seeking monetary damages from the vendor,” she said, but would not comment more about the timeline of the legal process. She also did not say how much money the department would be seeking in retribution.
Stewart’s comments come after recent days of harsh criticisms of the department and the FSA, which has been mired in controversy since its debut earlier this year.
From the get-go, the FSA test was riddled with technical problems, including a cyber attack from an unknown source and a slow-moving AIR server which left thousands of students with error messages in their language arts and mathematics tests.
State lawmakers responded swiftly to the testing issues. Most were highly critical of the test’s rocky roll-out, with some calling for a mandatory paper and pen option until the technical glitches were smoothed out.
Ultimately, legislators passed a bill which required the department to hire an independent company to verify whether the FSA was a valid tool to assess the academic achievement of Florida’s students.
Earlier this month, the department unveiled results of the summer-long validity study, which said the FSA fit the mold for general best test practices and thus was a valid test.
Yet despite the overall passing score for the FSA, some of the study’s conclusions and recommendations came under fire from lawmakers and public education officials statewide who expressed concerns over some of the test’s items not being reviewed fully for their applicability to Florida education standards.
The department has since attempted to fight back against “misconceptions” about the study’s results. On Thursday, it sent out a press release with five claims about the FSA, which was not received warmly by some state lawmakers.
Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, said the department’s news blast trying to dispel “myths” was “offensive” during Thursday’s Senate Pre-K-12 Education Committee meeting.
Senators also fielded questions to representatives from Alpine Testing Solutions and edCount on the specifics of the validity study.
Andrew Wylie of Alpine Testing said the Utah-based company was put on a pressuring timeline to complete the study.
“There was a very aggressive timeline set at the beginning of the process,” Wylie said.
Wylie admitted that although Alpine had done validity testing before with different types of test, the testing company had never reviewed a statewide assessment like the FSA.
Ultimately, Wylie said the results seemed to indicate the test was still on par with Florida standards.
“While the review process was not ideal ... it still was consistent with the test standards,” he said. “Content-wise, I think the content matches the standards at an appropriate level.”
Commissioner Pam Stewart said the department looked over two drafts of Alpine's study and briefly reviewed the final results around 5 p.m. Aug. 31, the day before the study results were released. While department officials didn't have any specific influence over the study's conclusions, the department did request to improve some aspects of the document, which was done via telephone.
Wylie admitted there was “rigorous debate” on the study’s results.
“This was not an easy decision,” he said.
Reach Allison Nielsen by email at allison@sunshinestatenews.com
