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Community Corner

State Starts to Consider New High School Test and Testing Contract

According to administration, negotiating and awarding contract will take better part of a year.

Lofty rhetoric about the need to improve New Jersey's high school tests aside, the Christie administration this week got down to a more mundane task: the advertising and awarding of its next testing contract.

The state's current testing contract with Measurement Inc., a North Carolina-based company, expires after this school year. Measurement, which also holds the contracts for elementary and middle school, is paid $9 million a year to develop, distribute and score the state's High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA) and its alternative and subject tests.

Looking to the 2012-2013 school year, administration officials said they have begun discussing what the next exam and contract could look like, and are about to start a public process to develop the requests for proposals (RFPs) for a new agreement.

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Department spokesman Justin Barra said the RFP will likely be completed "in the coming months," and it will take the better part of the school year to negotiate and award the final contract.

The next step, he said, will be the formation of an advisory committee of education leaders and other experts to discuss the kinds of skills and knowledge that should be expected of New Jersey's high school graduates.

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"Things will be moving rapidly," Barra said of the process. "The initial conversations have been held, but internal discussions alone won't address all this."

"We don't want to do this in isolation," he said.

Talking up the effort, acting education commissioner Chris Cerf this week put out a few hints about the new high school test. Cerf is traveling with Gov. Chris Christie on a three-stop campaign to promote the governor's education agenda.

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