Suburban Middle School Conference is open to bids for 2011

[the return of AHAN]

At its spring meeting of principals and athletic directors, the Suburban Middle School Conference decided to open up a bidding process for those interested in providing the question sets for their 2011 middle school scholastic bowl conference season.
Any writer that would like to be considered would need to be able to deliver the sets via e-mail on or before February 21st, 2011;
13 rounds of 30 toss-ups/ 20 bonuses, plus 3 rounds of 20 toss-ups/15 bonuses. Each set should contain at least 2 spare toss-ups, plus a spare bonus question. The committee is interested in companies that can provide quality, academic questions within the prescribed IESA categories and format, at a competitive rate. Schools involved in this conference include Barrington Station, Barrington Prairie, Lake Zurich North, Lake Zurich South, Wauconda, Fox River Grove, Island Lake Matthews, Grayslake, Hawthorn North, and Hawthorn South.
Interested parties should contact Jeff Price at j p r i c e at b a r r i n g t o n 2 2 0 dot o r g if they'd like to get involved or have questions about the process. Submissions are due by August 31st, 2010, and should include both a sample toss-up/bonus set of 30/20, and a written proposal wherein you outline your pricing and projected delivery dates. At that time, I will submit all candidates' proposals and samples to the SMS Conference Fall meeting, where they will select the 2011 conference vendor.

EDIT: time frame

[jonah]

their 2001 middle school scholastic bowl conference season

Ain't that the truth.

[the return of AHAN]

BUMP
I have received no formal bids at this time.

[BGSO]

MAQ would bid for this, but unfortunately their president has recently become inactive in terms of writing productivity.

[BGSO]

MAQ would bid for this, but unfortunately their president has become inactive in terms of writing productivity.

[Dan-Don]

MAQ would bid for this, but unfortunately their president has recently become inactive in terms of writing productivity.

By "recently" Garb means as recently as February 2nd, 2010.

[the return of AHAN]

MAQ would bid for this, but unfortunately their president has recently become inactive in terms of writing productivity.

By "recently" Garb means as recently as February 2nd, 2010.

So does this mean there'll be no bid forthcoming from MAQ?

[the return of AHAN]

Unless something comes in to me by Tuesday night, it looks like the conference administrators will have an easy choice...

[kayli]

So what are the writing restrictions? Kay Li Pro Bono Questions might submit a bid in lieu of other people...

That is, how are the questions and bonuses formatted and what distribution do they want?

[the return of AHAN]

So what are the writing restrictions? Kay Li Pro Bono Questions might submit a bid in lieu of other people...

That is, how are the questions and bonuses formatted and what distribution do they want?

QUESTIONS
Art. 1 50 match questions shall be a combination of 30 single-answer toss-up questions and 20 bonus questions consisting
of three to five parts which are rebounding.
a. Rebounding refers to the fact that the team to which the bonus is not awarded has the opportunity to pick up any part(s)
unanswered or answered incorrectly by the team to which the bonus was originally awarded.
Art. 2 Question Categories and Sub-Categories: If possible, all categories shall be represented in the questions for each
match. If this is not possible, there shall be at least three different categories in the Science, Mathematics, Social Studies,
SECTION 1 DEFINITION
SECTION 3 QUESTIONS
SECTION 2 MATCH
Language Arts, and General Information areas and at least two different categories in the Fine Arts and Vocational
Education.
a. Science (6 toss-up, 4 bonus): Earth Science, General Science, Life Science, Physical Science, Health
b. Mathematics (6 toss-up, 4 bonus): Algebra, Computers, General Math, Geometry
c. Social Studies (6 toss-up, 4 bonus): Civics, Economics, Current Events (From the beginning of the previous calendar
year), Geography, History
d. Language Arts (6 toss-up, 4 bonus): Grammar, Literature, Vocabulary, Spelling (Words will come from the Scripps-
Howard List)
e. Fine Arts/Performing Arts (2 toss-up, 1 bonus): Art, Dance, Drama, Music
f. Vocational Education (2 toss-up, 1 bonus): Agriculture, Home Economics, Industrial Arts
g. General Information (2 toss-up, 2 bonus): Physical Fitness, Movies, Popular Music, Sports, Television, Consumer
Economics


Art. 3 No multiple choice or true-false questions will be permitted.
Art. 1 Toss-up Questions answered correctly equal 10 points
Art. 2 Bonus Questions answered correctly total 20 points
a. 3-part questions – 7 points for 1 part answered correctly and 13 points for 2 parts
b. 4-part questions – 5 points for each part answered correctly
c. 5-part questions – 4 points for each part answered correctly

I included the scoring just so you understand what happens if you actually write a 3 part bonus; that is; the point distribution is uneven. As mentioned in the OP, 3 of the rounds are to be 20 TU and 15 bonuses; the distro won't perfectly match the 30/20, obviously, but as long as you don't have something far out of wack like 3 math toss-ups and 2 trash toss-ups in one round...
The bonus parts rebound as a unit and not as individual parts, which shuts down the idea of having bonus questions that have parts where the answer to part 1 is used in the question for part 2 and such...

[kayli]

Looks like I won't be able to get anything in. Sorry. Senior year and other excuses.

[the return of AHAN]

At today's AD meeting, by a vote of 9 to 1, the Suburban Middle School conference voted to continue with Questions Galore as the official provider of questions for the conference. The two reasons cited in support of remaining with Questions Galore included "They are the official question provider for State Series, so we should stick to that," and "if we switch question providers, what will we do with the stacks of QG practice questions we already have?"

That's it. I don't even have a punchline.

[David Riley]

You who are about to die salute us.

[Charbroil]

At today's AD meeting, by a vote of 9 to 1, the Suburban Middle School conference voted to continue with Questions Galore as the official provider of questions for the conference. The two reasons cited in support of remaining with Questions Galore included "They are the official question provider for State Series, so we should stick to that," and "if we switch question providers, what will we do with the stacks of QG practice questions we already have?"

That's it. I don't even have a punchline.

On the bright side, this means that you'll be able to use Olympia's ACF format sets for tournaments now, since originally, we were going to merge both sets into the SMS Conference set.