By DAVE RANNEY
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — The head of an instructional software company that’s been awarded a no-bid contract aimed at improving the state’s grade school reading scores today assured legislators that early test scores will show that hundreds of once-struggling students are now reading at or above their grade level.
“We look forward to providing that information to you,” said Don Fast, co-owner of Educational Design Solutions, a Newton-based company that sells access to Lexia Reading Core5 software in Kansas.
Testifying before an informational meeting of the House and Senate education committees, Fast said he would be presenting a mid-year evaluation of the company’s performance by mid to late February.
Fast said that since August, 173 of the state’s 771 elementary schools have signed up for the Kansas Reading Initiative.
About 100 of the schools, he said, were Educational Design Solutions customers prior to the $12 million initiative — $6 million a year for two years — added to the state budget in the waning hours of the 2013 Legislature by Rep. Marc Rhoades, a Newton Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee.
Rhoades later said he was unaware that Educational Design Solutions was headquartered in his district, though it was his proviso that put Fast’s company in charge of the initiative.
“Was this ‘sole source’ and not subject to the competitive bidding process?” Sen. Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, asked Fast of his company’s contract during today’s hearing
“Right,” Fast replied.
Hensley said he had “really strong concerns” that the initiative had been enacted without being vetted by the appropriations or education committees in either the House or Senate.
“I’m real interested in transparency and making sure (legislators) understand what this program is all about,” he said.
Fast said he hoped his mid-year report would allay those concerns.
Liz Brooke, a Lexia vice president in charge of education and research, told committee members that students “love” using the company’s software program.
“It’s extremely motivating,” she said.
Brooke said that about 5,000 of the 20,000 Kansas students who have been using Lexia for at least two months had been found to be one or two years behind in their grade levels when they started using the software.
But by late December, she said, data showed that two-thirds of those students were reading at or above grade level or were no more than one year behind.
“We’re seeing progress,” Brooke said.
Most of the committee members expressed support for the initiative.
“I’ll be very excited to hear your report,” House Education Committee Chair Kasha Kelley, an Arkansas City Republican, told Fast.
The initiative is being funded with revenues from the state’s master settlement agreement with the nation’s tobacco manufacturers. The funds are administered by the Kansas Children’s Cabinet.
In November, eight of the cabinet’s nine members voted not to include the initiative in the group’s spending recommendations for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
“There are concerns that this was some kind of backroom deal that somehow was allowed to circumvent the vetting processes that have been in place for many years now,” said Jonathan Freiden, a cabinet member and chief executive of U.S. Toy Company. “It definitely has the appearance of a boondoggle.”
Mark Desetti, a lobbyist with the Kansas-National Education Association, listened to Fast and Brooke’s presentations.
“I’m not here to judge Lexia,” he said. “The issue for us is why did (lawmakers) specify just this one program instead of letting school districts decide which program best meets their needs? I don’t know of anything that says Lexia is a bad program, it’s just that we think that’s a decision that’s best made at the local level.”