The Boston Public Schools has awarded three consecutive contracts worth nearly $4 million to a testing firm, even though it hasn’t met the district’s own requirement that its test be free of racial and ethnic bias, according to documents reviewed by WGBH News.
That test, the Independent School Entrance Exam, or ISEE, is used as the entrance exam for Boston Latin and the city’s two other exam schools.
Since 2012, three contracts have gone to the nonprofit behind the ISEE, the Educational Records Bureau, or ERB. They were for $1.6 million in 2012, $1.75 million in 2015 and $558,900 in 2018. ERB was the sole bidder each time.
The district’s requirements for the last three bids included either “evidence that the assessments are appropriate for a diverse student population” or “evidence that test instruments are bias-free and equitable assessments for a diverse student population.”