State sues online testing company.Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard The state Department of Education on Tuesday sued Vantage Learning, the Pennsylvania-based company that has administered Oregon's computerized state assessment system since 2001. The lawsuit, filed in Marion County Marion County is the name of seventeen counties in the United States of America, mostly named for General Francis Marion:
"We filed suit today against Vantage because Oregon students, teachers and districts have suffered, and will continue to suffer, as a direct consequence of Vantage's breach of contract," Superintendent of Public Instruction Susan Castillo Susan Castillo (born August 14 1951) heads the Oregon Department of Education as the Superintendent of Public Instruction.[1] Although she currently holds an elective statewide non-partisan office, she is a Democrat, and served from 1997 to 2003 in the Oregon State said in a prepared statement. The move comes a day after the department announced that Vantage had terminated its contract with Oregon. That means thousands of students who haven't yet completed mandated reading and math exams online will have to take them in May using paper and pencil. Educators worry that both the method and the timing of the exams will hamper student performance. With the popular Technology Enhanced Student Assessment system, known as TESA TESA Technology Enhanced Student Assessment (Oregon schools) TESA Teacher Expectations/Student Achievement TESA Testicular Epididymal Sperm Aspiration TESA Telefonica de España S.A. , students got immediate results and were able to take versions of the exams up to three times, often boosting their scores. With pencil and paper pencil and paper - An archaic information storage and transmission device that works by depositing smears of graphite on bleached wood pulp. More recent developments in paper-based technology include improved "write-once" update devices which use tiny rolling heads similar to mouse , they'll have one shot. While test scores don't count toward a student's grade, they are the primary criteria the federal and state government use to assess school performance. Vantage says Oregon owes more than $2.8 million from past years because the number of tests taken exceeded the maximum allowed under the annual $1.2 million contract. The department says the contract had been amended to remove the cap prior to that billing period. Robert Patrylak, general counsel for Vantage, said Tuesday that the company plans to countersue coun·ter·sue tr.v. coun·ter·sued, coun·ter·su·ing, coun·ter·sues Law To bring proceedings against (a plaintiff) in direct opposition to a suit brought against onself. as early as today. Allegations are likely to include libel libel 1) n. to publish in print (including pictures), writing or broadcast through radio, television or film, an untruth about another which will do harm to that person or his/her reputation, by tending to bring the target into ridicule, hatred, scorn or contempt of , slander slander: see libel and slander. Slander See also Gossip. Slaughter (See MASSACRE.) Basile calumniating, niggardly bigot. [Fr. Lit. and breach of contract, he said. While Patrylak insists the TESA system has been largely reliable this year, dozens of schools have reported problems in recent weeks, prompting department officials to twice tell districts to halt all testing. |
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