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F I S C A L I M P A C T R E P O R T

SPONSOR Miera

ORIGINAL DATE

LAST UPDATED

2/6/06

HB 208

SHORT TITLE Education Related Testing Service Contracts

SB

ANALYST Aguilar

APPROPRIATION (dollars in thousands)

Appropriation

Recurring

or Non-Rec

Fund

Affected

FY06

FY07

See Fiscal Implications

(Parenthesis ( ) Indicate Expenditure Decreases)

Duplicates Senate Bill 110

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

LFC Files

Responses Received From

Public Education Department (PED)

General Services Department (GSD)

SUMMARY

Synopsis of Bill

House Bill 208 adds to the Procurement Code authorization for professional services contracts to

develop and implement standardized tests for students in kindergarten through 12

th

grade and for

teacher tests required to obtain professional licensure to be for periods of up to 12 years.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS

Developing assessments is a costly process. The current test which assesses New Mexico public

school students in grades 3-9 cost $17,683,453.00 in Federal funding (contract period 2003-

2007) as well as an additional $2,587,430.00 out of the general fund (contract period 2002-

2006). This cost is for development only, and does not include costs to school districts to admin-

ister the assessment. Reducing the number of times the Public Education Department is required

to contract for new test development will significantly reduce assessment costs that the Public

Education Department incurs over the next several years.

House Bill 208 – Page 2

SIGNIFICANT ISSUES

At present, contracts for Educational Assessment have to be renewed every four years in keeping

with the Procurement Code. Generally, once a contract has been awarded, it takes a contractor a

year to develop the assessment and another year to field-test the tool. This allows for only two

years of data to be obtained by the contractor from that particular assessment tool. At this point,

the contract would have to be bid again and the process starts over. This causes the assessment

of student growth for the public education system very difficult as only two years of data are

achieved from each contract. Also, comparing various assessments (done by different contrac-

tors) can be extremely problematic. No Child Left Behind requires that public schools ensure

that all children are proficient in math and reading by the year 2014. Each time the Public Edu-

cation Department institutes a new testing vehicle the baselines have to be reset. Essentially, this

nullifies the previous assessment tool and the data acquired from it.

Teacher assessments, while not subject to the proficiency deadlines of No Child Left Behind,

suffer the same consequences of comparability between tests developed by different (and often

competing) vendors.

The department is currently in the second year of using SBA’s and continuity of assessment is

vital to providing year to year stability in assessment tools.

PERFORMANCE IMPLICATIONS

HB-208 relates to the PED performance measure of percent of SBA’s required by the No Child

Left Behind Act and New Mexico state statute that are developed and ready for distribution to

school districts.

PA/mt