A company awarded a $36.7 million contract to provide test items and related services to the Department of Education is pushing back against a bid protest filed by one of its competitors.
Officials with Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, which won the contract, say a DOE committee ruled fairly to give HMH the contract over a subsidiary of New York-based McGraw-Hill, which filed the protest earlier this month.
That filing, with the Department of Administrative Hearings, argues that DOE used the wrong criteria in weighing the offers of McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the final round of bid consideration.
Jim Panos, senior vice president of federal programs with HMH, said Wednesday that the system his company is offering offers the state a “long-term” database of testing problems and a string of related benefits.
Panos said HMH’s proposal, which would include the technology related to the test-item bank, professional development for teachers and analytics, was particularly strong because it would draw on test items created by Florida teachers.
“What we’re basically offering up is a solution that leverages the best Florida already has,” Panos said.
That is part of the dispute — whether HMH should have been able to assume that tens of thousands of its test items would be produced by Florida educators before it actually had an arrangement with those teachers to help develop the questions.
McGraw-Hill also says that if the bids were compared properly, the HMH bid would have been almost $3.5 million more than the McGraw-Hill offering.
Instead, the company says, incorrect information was given to a DOE committee that chose HMH, and the votes of those who attended the meeting by telephone show at least one member switched his vote from McGraw-Hill to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt after that discussion.
“The dissemination of inaccurate information between round 1 and round 2 resulted in a decision that was clearly erroneous, arbitrary and capricious,” the filing said.
Panos did not specifically dispute whether the price of his company’s bid, when everything else is taken into account, is actually higher than that of McGraw-Hill’s — saying he wanted to let the process go forward.
“It’s best value to the state, and it’s also best price. ... In terms of best value, we absolutely have that,” Panos said.
Panos also said the state would hopefully be able to use the system for years to come, though he did not say how long that might be.
“Our goal is to have them use it for a very long time,” he said.