The Department of Education last week awarded contracts for 20 new, comprehensive centers to provide advice to states and school districts on meeting the demands of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Once operational, the centers will replace the network of comprehensive assistance centers and mathematics-and-science centers that span the country now. (“Ed. Dept. Seeks Bids for New NCLB Help Centers,” June 15, 2005)
The five-year awards, ranging in size from $800,000 to $5 million, went to groups that include:
Southeast Regional Resource Center of Montgomery, Ala., which will operate the Alaska Comprehensive Center; Edvantia Inc. of Charleston, W.Va., which will run the Appalachia Region Comprehensive Center; Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., for a regional center serving Florida and Islands Region Comprehensive Center; and Learning Point Associates of Naperville, Ill., for a geographical center serving the Great Lakes East Region Comprehensive Center and a content center on teacher quality.
Other winners include:
RMC Research Corp. of Portsmouth, N.H., and WestEd of San Francisco, which will each run three centers. RMC’s facilities are a topical center on instructional content, a regional center serving New York State, and another one serving the New England states. WestEd will operate the California Comprehensive Center, the West/ Southwest Region Comprehensive Center, and a center on assessment and accountability.
The remaining awards went to:
George Washington University in Washington, for the Mid-Atlantic Region Comprehensive Center; the University of Oklahoma in Norman, which is set to run the Mid-Continent Region Comprehensive Center; Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning of Aurora, Colo., which will run the North Central Region Comprehensive Center; Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory of Portland, Ore., for the Northwest Region Comprehensive Center; Pacific Resources for Education and Learning of Honolulu, for the Pacific Region Comprehensive Center; Southwest Regional Educational Development Laboratory in Austin, Texas., which will run the Texas Comprehensive Center and the Southeast Region Comprehensive Center; the American Institutes for Research in Washington, for a center on high schools; and the Academic Development Institute of Lincoln, Ill., for an innovation and improvement center.
The Education Department said it put off plans to award a contract for a 16th geographic center to serve Illinois and Wisconsin because too few proposals met its standards. Department officials said they will hold a new competition for that center this month.
