The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has a congressional mandate to assess American students’ academic performance over time. Unfortunately, the bureaucratic processes to select NAEP’s contractors have been rife with inefficiencies and anticompetitive behavior. NAEP has fallen behind in assessment technology developments like automated scoring, and its anticompetitive contracting process—in which firms can’t bid on individual, specialized tasks but rather must find partners for a collective proposal—hinders its ability to catch up. Government staff responsible for NAEP refused to provide contracting data for outside studies, showed extreme preference for incumbent vendors, and did not respond to inquiries from the House Education and the Workforce Committee, NAEP’s designated congressional authorizing body. The new NAEP contracting process is improved, but policymakers must do more to encourage competition and ensure transparency for the new likely $1 billion NAEP contract.
Authors
- Pages
- 7
- Published in
- United States of America
Table of Contents
- Why Focus on Contracting 1
- Key Points 1
- The National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP has a congressional mandate to 1
- NAEP has fallen behind in assessment technology developments like automated scoring and 1
- Government staff responsible for NAEP refused to provide contracting data for outside studies 1
- The new NAEP contracting process is improved but policymakers must do more to encourage 1
- A Quick Introduction to NAEP 2
- The NAEP Contracting Cycle 2
- Contractors Central Role 2
- 40 years 2
- Trying to Improve NAEP 3
- The Internal Controls Report 3
- Yet a Third Report 3
- Ignoring Congress 4
- What Have We Learned 4
- Questions to Consider 5
- Concluding Comments 5
- About the Author 6
- Notes 6
