State Department of Ed. Signs Contract for Keystone Exams

While legislators are still debating whether Pennsylvania should institute graduation testing, the state Department of Education executed a $200 million contract with a company to start developing the tests.

Data Recognition Corporation of Maple Grove, Minnesota, will work on the Keystone Exams.

House Minority Leader Sam Smith says he has major concerns about the contract.

"This is just one more layer on top of another assessment system that they apparently don't think works. So one, I think it's a waste of money. It's going to be like $8 million this year and $200 and some million over the next four or five years," Smith said.

"Secondly, in a year when we have a very, very tight budget, to even be thinking of starting a new program such as this is just not common sense. There's not a lot of support for this in the legislature, I think they may be actually violating the law by signing this contract.

"I don't believe the average school board member and superintendents across Pennsylvania actually support this. But the biggest problem is it's a new program; it's additional money coming out of the education budget at a time when we really need to be controlling our spending and our revenues are down," Smith said.

The state is facing a $3 billion budget deficit.

Comments

Marcia L. Neil said…
Pennsylvania is not New York, where European immigrants traditionally leave their Queens for an independent life in the United States. The exit exams are a waste of money outside New York State.
Marcia L. Neil said…
It is folly to emulate NY State and their exit exams -- recording-industry factories based in NY (spread cancer-like throughout the nation) have continuously abused the 'freedom of the press' ethic with regard to audio/sound recordings, illegally assigning copyrights to named performers album after album, decade after deacde. The last place on earth where such tests should be developed is MN, where the metal-mining industry claims credit for every recorded soundwork. The MN and NY examples should be a lesson about misuses of 'freedom of the press' rather than a series of precedents to emulate.

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