Comments on the SHSAT and the Chancellors Privacy regulations

Dec. 13, 2024

On Wednesday, night, the new Public Engagement Committee of the Panel for Education Policy, NYC’s school board, met to hear from the public on two controversial issues, a contract for Pearson to produce a new computerized version of the SHSAT, the entrance exam for the Specialized high schools, and also  DOE’s  proposed revisions to the Chancellors regulations A- 820, that govern student privacy.

The proposed Pearson five year contract for the SHSAT at cost of $17 million took up most of the time, with many parents concerned that any further delay in a vote to approve the contract that had already been postponed twice would threaten the ability of their children to attend one of the eight elite schools that decide admissions solely by means of that one exam.  

My comments follow, suggesting that the PEP only renew the contract for one year, and base any further renewal on specific conditions.  I also include my comments on the Chancellors regulations.  Shannon Edwards of AI for Families also offered excellent comments on this critical issue; you can read them here.

A video of the proceedings is here. Whatever happens, it’s real progress that the Panel for Education Policy seems interested in hearing from the public on these critical issues, rather than merely rubberstamping whatever the Mayor wants them to do.

 Statements on SHSAT

Thank you for holding this public session this evening.  As the American Psychological Society, the American Education Research Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the testing companies themselves proclaim, no high stakes decision such as admissions to any school should be based upon test scores alone.

In fact, NYC is the only district in the nation that uses this unacceptable method for admissions to any single school, and yet we do it for eight schools, with a test that is non-transparent, scored in a highly unusual way, and is designed by Pearson, a company that has been shown repeatedly over more than a decade to engage in improper behavior and to  administer faulty tests and score them erroneously, year after year, starting with the infamous Pineapple questions on the 2012 state exam that not only  made news nationwide but  became a symbol of everything wrong about standardized testing.

 We have offered a timeline of these issues on our NYC Parent blog – none of which, by the way, did DOE report on in their Request for Authorization, as they should have been. .

We understand that the state requires a standardized exam, but we urge you to amend the terms of the contract so that it is renewed for only for one year, and condition any further renewals in the years to come on the following  three demands:

• DOE should use this test for admissions only for the three schools that are required to use a standardized exam by state law. 

• Consider whether another standardized test could be used instead for these three schools at lower cost or even for free, such as the state exam, as the law only says that a standardized exam should be used, and doesn’t specify which one, and also given how Pearson has a long history of errors and misdeeds;

• Finally, require full test transparency, including an independent analysis of the SHSAT for racial and gender bias, a formal validity study that shows whether the scores predict HS performance, and an analysis of how the results of the new computer-based adaptive exam compared to the earlier paper-based, non-adaptive exams.  

This sort of transparency has been requested for at least 16 years by researchers, but has not been provided.

 The importance of independently analyzing the exam for gender bias is paramount, as girls are accepted to the specialized HS at far lower rates than boys, and there is peer-reviewed, published research showing that those who are accepted do far better than boys who received the same scores.

 On the Chancellors A-829 proposed privacy regulations

Hi again, my name is Leonie Haimson and I am the co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.   We helped get a new  state student privacy law passed in 2014, Ed Law 2D, when we realized how ineffective the federal privacy protections for student data were in an era of ed tech expansion. 

I was appointed to serve on the state education department Data Advisory Committee, and  have  been advocating for years for the DOE to update their  Chancellors regulations A820, but was horrified to see that when this was finally done, they weakened rather than strengthened the existing privacy regulations, despite  widespread breaches and misuse of data that has occurred over the last few years. This includes the Illuminate breach that exposed the personal data of over one million current and former NYC students.

According to these regs, DOE and individual schools could disclose a huge range of student and parent info with anyone they please, and without any enforceable privacy or security protections, including but not limited to: their names; addresses; telephone numbers; e-mails; photographs; dates of birth; grade levels; enrollment status; dates of enrollment; participation in officially recognized activities and sports; weight and height and more.

They propose doing this by designating this info as “Directory Information”  -- an outmoded provision of FERPA from the 1970’s that allowed the disclosure of any information that would not be considered too risky  to divulge.

Yet this ignores the fact that there is NO mention in Ed Law 2D of Directory Information nor any language that would exempt any personally identifiable info from its mandated privacy protections.

Moreover, in this day and age, a child’s name, birth date and home address is sufficient for identity theft, as the NY Dept of State warns, which is especially valuable to fraudsters given that minors do not already have credit ratings.

Personal student data can also be used for predatory marketing by ad tech and social media companies, bombarding them with ads, and undermining their mental health, as noted in recent lawsuits launched vs Facebook, Instagram & TikTok by New York City and the State Attorney General

This data including photos could  also be used to threaten student safety, leading to sexual harassment, Deepfake porn or even abduction.

Providing student names, photos & addresses could also aid in the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrant students, based on their residence in hotels or shelters.

As a result of over 3,000 emails sent by parents and teachers to DOE and  Panel members, as well as letters from several elected officials and UFT President Michael Mulgrew, the vote on the regs was repeatedly delayed, and on Nov. 19, the Chancellor held a meeting during which she promised to form a Working group that would collaborate on the regs. Yet we have not heard back from the DOE about this Working Group, [Note: The next day, on Thursday at a CPAC meeting, the Chancellor and her team confirmed that a Data Privacy Working Group would begin meeting next month to strengthen these regulations].

We hope that in the meantime, the PEP will refuse to approve any regulations such as these which so seriously threatens the health, safety, and privacy of NYC students.  Thank you for your time.

Timeline of Pearson's Errors, Misdeeds and Crimes

Below is a timeline of the various misdeeds and testing errors Pearson has made over the last decade or more.  Pearson is up for a five-year DOE contract to deliver a computerized version of the SHSAT, at a cost of $17 million.

During a recent Talk out of School podcast,  Akil Bello, testing expert and critic, explained how the SHSAT is a very weird and controversial exam that has never been independently validated or assessed for racial or gender bias, and as a result, far fewer Black, Latino and female students are admitted to the specialized high schools. This year, just 4.5% of offers went to Black students, and 7.6% to Latino students, though the two groups make up 65% of NYC students.  Though we don't have the gender breakdown, in past years far fewer girls were admitted, though they tend to have higher test scores on the state exams and get better grades.  More on this in my comments to the PEP here.

 Whatever your viewpoint on testing, Pearson is not to be trusted:

In 2012, the state exam produced by Pearson featured the infamous Pineapple reading passage that made news nationwide, and years later even featured on John Oliver’s HBO Show This Week tonight.  (you can google it; we broke the story first). The Pineapple became a symbol of everything wrong about standardized testing. Worst thing was this reading passage had been included for years on lots of other Pearson state exams, sparking criticisms by students and teachers each time. The exam featured at least 30 other errors, with  faulty questions and problems with translation and scoring.

In 2013,  Pearson state exams were too long, too difficult, full of ambiguous questions that made children cry. They also featured crass, commercial product placements as well as  reading passages lifted off of Pearson textbooks that had been purchased and assigned to students elsewhere in the state but not NYC.  According to Kathleen Porter Magee of the conservative Fordham Institute, Pearson was abusing its monopoly power in way that "threatens the validity of the English Language Arts (ELA) scores for thousands of New York students and raises serious questions about the overlap between Pearson's curriculum and assessment divisions." 

Also in 2013, the Pearson Charitable Foundation paid $7.7 million fine after the State Attorney General found they had broken state laws by generating business for the company.

Also in 2013, Pearson agreed to pay $75 million in damages plus costs to settle a lawsuit over price-fixing e-books.

Also in 2013, they were found to make  mistakes in scoring the NYC Gifted and talented tests, not once but twice,

In 2015, it was discovered that Pearson was monitoring students’ social media who criticized their NJ state exams.

Here is a list of other Pearson problems through 2016.

In 2018, Pearson lax security practices led to one of the largest student data beaches in history of their AIMS web program between 2001 and 2016, and who were enrolled in 13,000 school and universities throughout the country. The breach involved probably millions of students including many  in NY, whose data should have been long deleted because they no longer had contracts for the delivery of the program.  The FBI alerted Pearson to the breach in March 2019, but they didn’t tell anyone, including the schools or the students till months later, July 31, 2019. 

In 2021, Pearson was fined $1M by the FEC for misleading investors about the AIMs breach.  [They should also have had to pay the families of the students' whose data was breached, as well as had all future contracts blocked by NY State for having violated the required timeline of reporting on the breach, but weren't.]

In 2020, Pearson was awarded a huge contract with DOE despite 34 investigations for discrimination against its employees on grounds of race, disability, gender, age, etc. and many technical issues with erroneous scoring,  online service disruptions, the above breach, and more.   

In 2021, a Pearson Middle East textbooks was pulled in the UK for bias.

In 2023, the plans of hundreds of international students to enroll in UK universities were derailed after Pearson revoked some of their online English language exam results following allegations of cheating, without giving students a  chance to appeal these decisions.

What makes DOE think that Pearson is capable of developing, scoring and administering and scoring a reliable exam -- even if you believe in the notion of high-stakes testing?

Last night's historic vote of the Panel for Educational Policy to reject the Pearson contract for assessing "giftedness"

 Last night was truly one for the history books, at least in the history of NYC public schools:  the Panel for Educational Policy, composed of a majority of mayoral appointees, voted down a DOE contract. 

After more than six hours of testimony by CEC members, elected officials, students and parents, most of whom opposed its renewal, eight panelists voted to reject the highly controversial Pearson contract to provide the "gifted" test, administered to kids as young as four years old; with only seven members voting yes.  This is despite the fact that the Mayor appointed two new representatives in the last two weeks and personally lobbied his appointees to approve it. Stories here: NY1, Chalkbeat, NY Daily News and Gothamist.  

It was the first time the PEP ever voted to reject a contract, since they were given this authority in 2009 -- which was meant to provide stronger oversight and a check on corruption. [As I testified in 2011, it didn't work and the panel has rubber-stamped many corrupt and wasteful contracts ever since.]  

 I wrote about this unsupportable Pearson contract for the Gotham Gazette last week, though I really didn't expect it would be rejected.  I also discussed it on my "Talk out of School" podcast with  Akil Bello of FairTest, who explained how the test had no validity or reliability, had clearly racially biased results, and to continue giving it especially during a pandemic was absurd.  

Even the Chancellor last night admitted that "There is no research, there is no pedagogical reason why one test to four-year-olds should be a sole determinant"  to entry to a gifted program, while tepidly urging the panel members to renew it for just one more year.

Of all the unprecedented events of last night, perhaps the most bizarre was that Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan was brought into the meeting  to justify it.  Fuleihan couldn't log on at first, so there were about seven minutes of empty time, but when he finally managed, he haplessly tried to explain that now, city officials were serious about changing the program and the screening method and would start planning this after this year.  They would go on "listening tours", and ask PEP members for their input, yada yada yada.  

This is after the DOE already had a full year to work on changing this process, which they promised they would do the last time they asked the PEP to renew the contract, sometime last year.  Also see the leaked DOE memo from  July - showing DOE had already been discussing how to proceed for many months.  

Chalk this down to more indecision and inefficiency of Mayoral control -- depending on one, very fallible person to make all decisions for nearly a million public school students.  The total ineptitude of the process recalls de Blasio's unconscionable delay in closing the schools in mid-March when the pandemic was at its height, and his failure to plan for their reopening till sometime in mid-July. (Check out my Myths of Mayoral control testimony for more on this point.)

Fulehain though in charge of the city budget has no background in education, so it was very strange that of all the people in the universe, he was the one brought in to defend the contract on the Mayor's behalf-- but perhaps it was to allow him to make the (unconvincing) claim that the DOE would be "reimbursed" for the five million dollars the administration of the test would cost.  Reimbursed by whom he didn't say.

There were so many eloquent, incisive, passionate comments from parents, students and advocates, it's impossible to recount them all, but here is a transcript of the entire night,  from the sometimes unreliable automatic transcription service used by DOE.  

Check out Lucas Healey's comments at 19:20:54, a District 75 student, and the points made by CEC 2 member Eric Goldberg . Here is the brief testimony on behalf of Class Size Matters by my assistant, Michael Horwitz.  Read Jessica Byrne, President of CEC 22's comments at 19.53, about how sick she was of the political manipulation leading to the night's vote.

Two different CEC leaders said it was outrageous  to spend $5M on this program, when hundreds of students in their districts still didn't have computer or other devices to be able to access remote learning, and thus were at risk of not graduating: Kaliris Salas Ramirez of CEC4 in E. Harlem, and Ayesha Irvin of D5 in Central Harlem.

Shino Tanikawa, another CEC2 member and a member of the Mayor's School Diversity Advisory Group that recommended dismantling the entire gifted program more than a year ago, called in from Japan and spoke at 20:40: 

It's actually unbelievable to me that we're having this conversation in the middle of the pandemic, when we have students who don't have devices. Who don't have internet connectivity. Who don't have food and whose parents don't have a job. Who might become homeless tomorrow.

And we are talking about G&T that serves thousands of students at most; in 2019 3,700 offers were made. That's it.

And we're spending so much time and energy and money and debate on this one, we really should be working on making sure that all our students but particularly those who are historically marginalized have what they need to thrive. Even in the pandemic. Instead we are here, pleading with you to just vote this down so we can move onto more important things.

$5 million. Just imagine what you can do with $5 million. Here's one idea. A lot of schools are going to own money back to central because of register loss. And a lot of families actually left the system it seems this year. Instead of making schools pay back what they owe, start using some of these $5 million. There are other places where we can use this $5 million I know of…Please vote No.

Here are the comments of  PEP members, extracted from the transcript,  who explained their positions on the issue,  many of them very emphatic and revealing, including the PEP chair, Vanessa Leung and co-chair Lori Podvesker, both mayoral appointees who nearly always vote in alignment with the Mayor.  

Lori specifically decried the pressure that had been put on her by the Mayor to vote yes. Shannon Waite spoke at length about the deep racial bias that this test and the entire gifted program represented.  She acknowledged that she had been appointed to fill the seat when another Black member of the PEP was forced to quit after she voted against the closures of two schools, and wondered if she too would be replaced after she voted no. Yet another Mayoral appointee, Gary Linnell said he changed his mind during the course of the evening, because of all the CEC members who spoke against the test.

The Bronx BP appointee, Geneal Chacon, and the Queens BP appointee, Deb Dillingham, explained that they were voting to approve the contract even though this was contrary to their personal views. 

The Manhattan BP rep, Michael Kraft, and a Mayoral appointee, Natalie Green Giles, voted to approve the contract without any comment; while the Brooklyn rep April Chapman and Staten Island rep Peter Calandrella voted against the contract without explanation either.  Here are all the votes:

Seven votes yes: Isaac Carmignani (mayoral appointee); Deborah Dillingham (Queens BP appointee) , Eric Henry (Mayoral); Geneal Chacon (Bronx BP), Natalie Green Giles (Mayoral); Michael Kraft (Manhattan BP); Larian Angelo (Mayoral)

Eight votes no: Tom Sheppard (CEC appointee); Lori Podvesker (Mayoral); Gary Linnen (Mayoral); Kathy Park Price (Mayoral); Shannon Waite (Mayoral); Peter Calandrella (Staten Island BP) ; April Chapman (Brooklyn BP); Vanessa Leung (Mayoral)

God knows what will happen now.  The mayor during his presser today said he was determined to go ahead with the program anyway:

...for the families and there's thousands and thousands of families. I think it's about 15,000 each year, typically, that want to get their kids in those gifted and talented programs. I'll tell them I'm a parent. I was a public school parent. You will have an opportunity to apply for those programs this year. We'll work on the right methodology and we'll announce it soon. But families can hear directly from me. Yes, you will be applying for the opportunity for your kids to be in those gifted and talented programs, and we'll get an update to folks soon.   

Why this Mayor, who ran on trying to ensure equity in our schools, chose this particular hill to die on is anyone's guess.  If you have a theory or a comment or would like to share your testimony from last night, please do it it in the comment section below.

What the leaked DOE memo on the "gifted" test reveals

Update 1.27.2021: Daily News reported last night that the Mayor has hurriedly appointed two new PEP members whose seats had long been vacant and is personally calling others of his appointees to push the extension of the Pearson contract through.

 

In several of the articles on the controversy over the renewal of the Pearson contract for the gifted test, which will be voted on tomorrow Wed. night by the Panel for Educational Policy,  including in the Daily News and Chalkbeat, a confidential draft DOE memo from July 2020 is mentioned that was leaked to PEP members.  

The memo is embedded above and is also posted here.  Several things stand out about this memo.  First of all, it clearly points out that doing any testing at during the pandemic is likely to intensify the inequities of this program, that are already too evident:

 "Testing during this time could exacerbate inequities for an admissions program that is widely known to have disparate outcomes by race. Data shows that the pandemic has impacted poor and ethnically diverse New York neighborhoods at higher rates than wealthier, predominately White ones. The difference in performance by racial and/or socioeconomic group could be increased by the impact of the pandemic, as students face loss of loved ones, loss of family income, food instability, etc."

Also: "Funding used for this program could be redistributed to programs providing more essential services to students."  

This is surely true. Yesterday at the PEP Contract committee meeting, the DOE admitted that based on previous years, administering the test cost about $5 million, including the Pearson contract.  They also implied that it might be even more expensive this year, because of the need for PPE and other COVID safety precautions.

Yet instead of mentioning the possibility that the entire program should be eliminated, as the Mayor's School Diversity Advisory Group recommended, this memo expanding it via a "universal screening program" for all students, starting in  2nd grade.  This screening process could include "a standardized, group-administered, machine-scored test" as well as several other assessments, and would surely be even more expensive to purchase and administer, and take hours of classroom  time.

Rather than reject the whole notion of screening young students for "giftedness", these DOE officials propose:

Though young gifted learners are heterogeneous and may not be easily defined or assessed, a pattern of gifted behaviors and/or advanced performance can be seen as early as preschool. Using scales, checklists, and student portfolios gives teachers opportunities to elicit behaviors characteristic of giftedness. Identification tools should vary by population (e.g., ELLs/MLLs, SWDs), and any teacher-facing component should include anti-bias trainingand training on identification and norm-referenced identification tools.

Really?  I would have hoped that for an agency that says they are devoted to the goal of improving equity, more options might be offered, including that the DOE should focus on providing all students programs and services to expand upon their inherent talents,  interests and gifts, rather than selected a subset of students for special treatment, based upon a complicated, expensive and likely unreliable system of checklists, scales, portfolios, and assessments.

The leaked memo also explains why the DOE is asking the PEP to renew the Pearson contract into next fall , as they intend "use the Pearson as the universal screener for some time" because it will take several years to select and purchase new assessments. [Click to enlarge]

The memo predicts how the proposed change in assessments and screening process might produce a "negative reaction" among supporters of the current program, but not about how the many advocates, parents and experts who oppose the entire notion of testing and screening young children might respond,  including  members of the PEP as well as the Mayor's own Diversity Advisory group.

Perhaps the lack of foresight and consideration of equity evident here results from the fact that though the memo is purportedly from Linda Chen, the Chief Academic Officer, it seems to have been written exclusively by staff who work in the DOE Office of Assessment, (though neither of the two staffers with the most comments, Winnie Huang and Michael Ryan, appear to have any particular training or technical expertise in this area.)  Perhaps it is natural that people in this office would simply want to administer tests and more tests, rather than think holistically about the needs of the whole child or the best use of scarce education funds.  As the expression goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 

Of course, this wasn't necessarily the final draft of this memo, and perhaps others at DOE provided more careful consideration of these issues subsequently. DOE officials told Chalkbeat that it was “one of many iterations of potential proposals and options considered.” though they refused to make the final version available.

A side note: it is peculiar that in the unmarked approval checklist of DOE officials  appended to the end of the memo there appears the name of Hydra Mendoza, the former head of Community Empowerment, Partnerships, and Communications, who  left the DOE in Sept. 2019 - nearly a full year before the memo was drafted.

Again, I urge the PEP members to reject the extension of the Pearson contract at tomorrow night's meeting, because, as the memo points out, "if the extension is not approved, the DOE currently does not have an alternative assessment available to assess gifted intellectual ability for admissions for SY 21-22". You can make your voice heard by tomorrow night by registering here, starting at 5:30 PM.

Why the DOE should cancel the unfair, unreliable and invalid "gifted" test now and forever & podcast on need to cancel all high-stakes testing this year

 Please read my piece published today at Gotham Gazette.  It explains why the DOE should cancel the "gifted" tests immediately; now and forever.  It makes no sense to continue this invalid, unreliable and biased exam, especially in the midst of a pandemic and the prospect of steep budget cuts to schools.  The contract will cost $1.7M and this doesn't even include the considerable but undisclosed DOE costs of administering this test to kids as young as four-year-old, one on one.  

My piece also deals with the horrific record of Pearson, who produces the test.  The renewal of the Pearson contract will be voted on next Wed., January 27 by the New York City Panel for Educational Policy.  Those who would like to speak on the proposal can register here, starting at 5:30 PM.  You can also email PEP members with your views.  Here are their emails: vleung@schools.nyc.gov; SWaite3@schools.nyc.gov; lpodvesker@schools.nyc.gov; PCalandrella@schools.nyc.gov; ICarmignani@schools.nyc.gov; GChacon@schools.nyc.gov; MKraft2@schools.nyc.gov; GLinnen@schools.nyc.gov; Achapman7@schools.nyc.gov; NGreenGiles@schools.nyc.gov; DDillingham@schools.nyc.gov; kparkprice@schools.nyc.gov; tomcsheppard@yahoo.com; ehenry16@schools.nyc.gov

Below is my podcast from Wednesday on the need to cancel all high-stakes testing this spring, including the gifted tests, the state 3rd-8th grade exams, and the Regents high school exit exams, with guests Akil Bello of FairTest, Lisa Rudley of NY State Allies for Public Education, and Jeanette Deutermann of LI Opt out.

 

As discussed on the podcast, here is the NYSAPE petition urging the State Commissioner to cancel the Regents high school exit exams and to ask the US Department of Education for a waiver from having to administer the 3rd-8th grade exams this spring; also the FairTest petition to the US Department of Education and state education policymakers to suspend all high stakes testing this year. Finally, blog post and fact sheet on what’s wrong with the Regents graduation exit exams.

In the midst of its budget crisis, DOE asks the PEP to approve six million dollars for Pearson

UPDATE 6.18.20: Approval of the contract extension of the Pearson Gifted test has been removed from the PEP agenda for tonight.

Amid the Covid pandemic which will require smaller classes and new health and safety measures,  and despite huge proposed cuts to schools next year, DOE is asking the Panel for Educational Policy to approve six million dollars to be awarded Pearson at its Thursday, June 18 meeting (though the meeting is wrongly dated on the list of proposed contracts as Wed. June 17.)

Of that six million dollars, $1.7 million is for a one -year extension of Pearson's controversial assessment to test four-year-old children for their “giftedness” – a standardized exam which many experts say has little reliability or validity, and is highly correlated with race and class.  

Another $4.8 million is to be awarded Pearson for a one-year extension to its SchoolNET platform, used to administer  interim assessments and report scores.  

The document that lists these contracts, known as the RA for Request for Authorization, reveals that in 2016, DOE asked the NYC  Technology Development Corporation (NYCTDC), to  recommend an alternative, and they recommended that this be outsourced  to another vendor, “as the DOE did not have the internal resources and/or expertise to develop, maintain, and continuously enhance an assessment platform to meet its needs, particularly given the number of external solutions readily available assessment platform to meet the needs for a formative assessment platform.”

At the recommendation of the NYCTDC, DOE released a new RFP for an assessment platform in March 2018, more than two years, ago, with multiple responses from vendors, but apparently even in that space of time they have been unable to settle  on another one – though they say they will come back to the PEP with an alternative proposal sometime in the future; meanwhile, they  say they needed to extend this contract with Pearson for another year.  

Both Pearson proposals include more than two pages of problems with Pearson that DOE found out about the company via a "background check," including 34 investigations for discrimination against its employees on grounds of race, disability, gender, age, etc. and many technical issues with erroneous scoring,  online service disruptions and more.   

At the same time, this list is far from comprehensive, and omits many Pearson scandals,  including the infamous Pineapple passage on the 8^th grade ELA exam, which had bewildered and stressed students in several states since 2007, until it finally was exposed as so absurd to be unanswerable in the New York exam in 2012 and removed from scoring.   

Nor does the DOE list mention the fiasco the following year, when Pearson wrongly scored the results of thousands of NYC children on the gifted exam.  

Here's a more complete list of Pearson errors through 2013 , published in the Washington Post, and another through 2016.  I guess DOE contract officers don't know how to use google.

DOE also proposing that the PEP approve a 4 month, $5 million emergency extension for a contract with Prutech that would run from May 14 through August, for various COVID-related tasks including student portal development, although last month, the PEP already approved a $1.8 million emergency contract with  Prutech to go through June 30, which also included student portal development.

Prutech designed the godawful DOE website which is so unusable that it you cannot find the documents you’re looking for through its search function, and the URLs on the website are so difficult to share that I have to download docs like this month's RA, upload them my Class Size Matters site and share that URL for people to be able to find them. 

If people want to email the PEP members about these contracts, their email addresses are to the right and below under Panel for Educational Policy info; you can also attend the PEP meeting remotely via https://learndoe.org/pep/june18 and sign up to speak from 5:30PM until 6:15 PM on that date..