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Pearson Education holds the contract to supply New Jersey and nearly a dozen other states with the PARCC exams for grades 3 through 11. Pearson's original proposal for the contract is nearly 800 pages. (Kelly Heyboer | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)
TRENTON — New Jersey recently made a deal with Pearson Education to write, score and administer the state's new standardized tests for public school students.
More than 896,000 of the state's students in grades 3 through 11 have begun taking the computerized tests known as PARCC, or the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.
New Jersey is one of about a dozen states in a consortium that came together to develop the PARCC exam to assess what their students are learning.
New Mexico officials took the lead and put out a call for bids last year for a company to write and administer the PARCC exams. Pearson, a multi-national corporation based in London, was the lone bidder.
New Jersey adopted the framework of New Mexico's contract and pricing agreement in a deal that could pay Pearson as much as $108 million over the next four years.
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Through the state's Open Public Records Act, NJ Advance Media obtained more than 1,000 pages of documents related to New Jersey's Pearson deal.
The documents embedded below include Pearson's original proposal for the PARCC contract, New Jersey's pricing agreement and a list of subcontractors used by the testing company. The documents also include the original bidding documents from New Mexico.
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Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellyHeyboer. Find NJ.com on Facebook.