Scoring Pilot and Field Tests for Select New York State Examinations

New York State Education Department (NYSED) - Office of State Assessment

Agency: State

GrantWatch ID #146330

Grant Description

Contract for services to a New York nonprofit or for-profit entity to grade secondary-level field and pilot tests for selected Regents exams such as mathematics, English, science, social studies, and history. The vendor will hire and train exam graders, and facilitate the scoring of the constructed-response and essay questions by the raters. The raters hired by the vendor should have at least a bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 15 college credits or teaching certification from any state in the subject area of the pilot or field test being scored.

In conducting the scoring, the vendor will ensure that the raters use the rubrics and scoring guides provided by NYSED to score the constructed-response and essay questions. Inter-rater reliability will be established by having fifteen percent of the responses scored independently by two separate raters. For each item, the vendor will record, in narrative, summary style, how students appear to relate to the stimulus, any problems the students appear to have in undertaking the task, items that were misunderstood, and comments on the effectiveness of the training materials.

The successful bidder will provide for the scoring of pilot and field tests administered during the five calendar years of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024.

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Eligibility:

Others (see text field entitled "Additional Eligibility Criteria" for clarification)

Additional Eligibility Criteria:

The eligible bidder must agree to the Mandatory Requirements found below and submit the Mandatory Requirements Certification Form located in 5.) Submission Documents signed by an authorized person. If the bidder’s proposal fails to meet any of these mandatory requirements, it will be disqualified.

1. Bidders must be either for-profit or not-for-profit entities who have a minimum of three years of experience scoring secondary-level constructed-response questions included on field test and/or operational large scale secondary-level assessments in English, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies.

2. Bidders must bid on the scoring of all pilot and field tests selected by NYSED any pilot and field tests in the content areas listed in the Scoring Pilot and Field Tests section of this RFP. Constructed-response items and/or essays on any of the pilot and field tests for the Regents Examinations and elementary- and intermediate-level Science tests described in this RFP but not limited to those titles will be scored each year that they are administered during the five calendar years of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. See the chart (Attachment 1) of the RFP which indicates the estimated number of answer papers associated with the various pilot and field tests. NYSED expects the bidder to consider these estimated numbers of answer papers when computing a cost per 250 or 500 papers respectively.

3. Bidders must identify a Project Manager with a bachelor’s degree or above to be the central point of contact with NYSED for this contract.

Pre-Application Information:

Documents must be received at NYSED no later than September 20, 2019 by 3:00 PM.

Facsimile copies of the proposals are NOT acceptable.

Questions regarding the request must be submitted by E-mail no later than the close of business August 23, 2019. Questions regarding this request should be identified as Program, Fiscal or M/WBE. A Questions and Answers Summary will be posted to Competitive Procurement Contracts no later than September 6, 2019.

The majority of pilot tests and field tests will be administered to students in the spring with the timeline illustrated in the RFP, page 6 (See Supporting Documents below). However, some of either may be administered in the fall. For the small proportion of pilot and field tests that NYSED administers in the fall (October or November) the vendor will perform the same tasks an equivalent number of months following the administration and with the same pricing as it is compensated for the scoring of field tests administered in the spring.

Additional Funding Information:

Number of Grants:

NYSED will award one (1) contract with a term of five (5) years pursuant to this RFP.

Term of Contract:

The contract resulting from this RFP is anticipated to begin on January 1, 2020 and end on December 31, 2024.

Contact Information:

Submit questions to AssessmentRFP@mail.nysed.gov.

The following are the designated contacts for this procurement:
Program Matters
Victoria Mahar
(518) 474-5902

Fiscal Matters
Jessica Hartjen
(518) 473-5733

M/WBE Matters
Joan Ramsey
(518) 486-6883

The mailing address for all documentation is:
NYS Education Department
Bureau of Fiscal Management
Attn: Adam Kutryb, RFP #20-001
Contract Administration Unit
89 Washington Avenue, Room 501W EB
Albany, NY 12234