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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.
pg_0002
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