Reis: “Harcourt Messed Up”
Questions State School Superintendent and Harcourt over ISAT fiasco

April 6, 2006

Springfield.….State Representative David Reis (R-Ste. Marie) and other House members criticized education officials Wednesday over failures concerning a critical state test seeking explanations as to why test materials were not delivered on time and questioned whether results of the ISAT tests would even be valid. Controversy has swirled around Governor Blagojevich and a contract awarded Harcourt Inc. for the purpose of printing and distributing ISAT testing materials.

“Today’s hearing gave rise to many more questions than it provided answers” said Reis. “We asked many questions as to what happened, what went wrong, and who was responsible. Many of the answers we heard from Harcourt were ‘I can’t answer that’ or ‘we’ll have to get back to you’, and for me, that just raises my level of concern a great deal.”

State School Superintendent Randy Dunn, other administrators at the Illinois State Board of Education, and representatives from Harcourt Assessment Inc. appeared for three hours before the Elementary and Secondary Education Committee on Wednesday. Committee members were seeking answers to how the state agency could have failed to get out state achievement tests to some school districts by the March 13th start date.

“Harcourt should receive an “F” for this year’s effort” Reis said. “They’ve been in the business of testing for 30 years and they still don’t have the wherewithal to put together a testing system that gets all materials in place, gets them delivered on time, and sees to it that our children and our school districts, both of whom rely heavily on state and federal funding, have an accurate and credible test.”

190 school districts asked to be able to delay starting testing because they didn't get their test booklets and other materials on time.

A number of lawmakers also questioned why lobbyist John Wyma, a former top aide to Governor Rod Blagojevich, was involved in helping Harcourt win the $45 million testing contract in 2004.

“I’m extremely concerned because we have brought ‘pay to play politics’ into our third grade classrooms with Harcourt’s hiring of the Governor’s former chief of staff” said Reis. “I also question why the Governor is not here in Springfield taking care of this problem. This is his State Board of Education, he’s changed its structure and he should be leading the way in this investigation.”

Reis added the chief executive is more concerned about scheduling campaign debates than he is about the children of our state.

“We just hope that something substantive comes out of this hearing and we start getting some answers to this year’s test fiasco and more importantly we hope to prevent it from happening next year” said Reis.