The Multi-Million Dollar Question for Online Testing: What Will it Cost?

The advent of statewide online testing in 2014-15 has prompted all kinds of questions. Will school districts have the technology? Will teachers have the training? Will students have the skills?

Add another to the list: Will it cost more?

The chief developer of the test that New Jersey will use, Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), this week tried to assuage some of those worries for customers across the country. In an online presentation posted Monday, PARCC estimated that its testing will cost about $29.50 per student, roughly the same amount as is now spent on average by its 20 member states.

That’s about what New Jersey now spends for its language arts and math testing in grades three through eight and 11, which works out to $21 million in 2012-13. Overall, New Jersey pays $26 million a year for the exams, but that includes science, which won't be part of PARCC testing at the start.

Still, once the PARCC tests become an annual event for grades three through 11 (adding ninth and tenth grades), New Jersey’s total will come in at about $27 million, by PARCC’s math.

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