The Delaware Department of Education is preparing to launch a survey unlike any other in the coming months. The survey is a product of UChicago Impact, a non-profit company owned by the University of Chicago. The survey, which is part of the Delaware School Success Framework (school report card), will have questions for students, teachers and parents to answer. To say some of the questions are intrusive would be an understatement. The part that offends me the most is this:
*Questions from the parent survey do not affect a school’s performance on the 5Essentials
Not to let the cat out of the bag so fast, but last week the DOE had a section for this on their website, but you couldn’t access any of the links. I contacted their public information officer, Alison May, and advised her of this. She emailed back and said it was supposed to be on their intranet for teachers. But today, all the links were available. So you can read the questions ahead of time and let me know what you think.
5Essentials 2016 Survey Questions
5Essentials Communication Kit for Delaware
5Essentials Phase 1 Training/Orientation for Delaware
When I emailed Alison May at the DOE about this last week, this was her response:
“The Delaware School Success Framework (DSSF) will include information to highlight performance across multiple domains. Based upon significant stakeholder feedback, information about school climate and culture will be provided through student, teacher and parent surveys. The Department recently selected the UChicago Impact, a nonprofit organization focused on K-12 education at the University of Chicago, as the state’s vendor to administer the surveys. UChicago Impact’s “5Essentials” (5E) is an evidence-based system designed to drive improvement in schools nationwide. Currently school administrators are signing up for a related training. So likely that is the restricted access. They likely can see that page when they sign into the site. I’ll alert the web folks that the tab should be on the intranet as well if it is confusing.”
A year ago, the United States Department of Education really pushed 5Essentials for survey use. It looks like Delaware took the bait. Oddly enough, I can find no contract for this company anywhere on the State Contract website, nor could I find any payments going to 5Essentials, Urban Education Institute, UChicago Impact or the University of Chicago. So who is paying for this and who holds the contract? In doing an exhaustive search, the contract number for this was DOE_2015-15SuccessSurvey_RFP, but it shows no awarded bidder under the Awarded Vendors or Awarded Contracts. But we do know what was in the Request for Proposal (RFP) and who put in bids for it:
Delaware DOE School Success Survey RFP
Solicited Bids for Delaware DOE School Success Survey
So once again DOE, why is there no contract with this company for the public to see? We have seen this before with contracts with American Institutes for Research in regards to DCAS and the Smarter Balanced Assessment. When information like this is missing, it always makes me suspicious. Sounds like Dr. Godowsky may want to look into why the DOE cherry-picks which contracts the public should see. Interesting that the State of Delaware links to the bid website page in a section called “transparency”…
The Season Of Myths 