A House bill is closer to replacing ISTEP with ILEARN, but local educators are hesitant to say the new standardized test will automatically be better.
“Until we see exactly what the replacement test will be, there’s no way to tell if it’s different than before,” said Lezlie Winter, assistant superintendent at Mississinewa Community Schools.
House Bill 1003, the legislation to replace the ISTEP, passed the Senate Education and Career Development Committee this week by a 7-4 vote. If signed into law, the new test could be implemented as early as 2018.
Sen. Andy Zay, R-Huntington, said that he believes this bill is a step in the right direction for replacing Indiana’s standardized test.
“There are still some challenges, but I think it is a positive step forward. It simplifies a lot of things,” he said.
Zay said the top priorities in discussion with this bill were getting educators timely test results, reducing test time and having educators intimately involved in replacing the ISTEP.
According to the bill, the ILEARN, Indiana’s Learning Evaluation Assessment Readiness Network, would consist of a statewide assessment, an optional benchmark assessment, the implementation of policies on how to use data and information and other programs required by the Indiana State Board of Education.
Students in grades three through eight would still take the state standardized test under ILEARN. However, the bill would cut out the fifth and seventh grade social studies test that would reduce overall test taking by about 1 1/2 hours per student.
ILEARN would also bring back end of course assessments for high school students in English and language arts, Algebra I and science beginning in the 2017-18 school year.
Winter said that the previous ECAs were fair assessments of the students. As long as the new ECAs are similar to those of previous years, she said that she would be able to support this measure.
The fiscal note on House Bill 1003 states that since the former ECAs were established before the current academic standards were created, the new tests would have to be modified to fit them.
High school students would also be required to take a nationally recognized college or career readiness test, which could include an International Baccalaureate exam, an Advanced Placement test, a nationally recognized college entrance exam, as assessment to receive dual credit or industry-recognized certificates, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery or another assessment approved by the State Board.
With the addition of these tests, high school students would see an increase in overall testing time for the school year.
Another potential contentious issue is the bill keeps teacher evaluations tied to the standardized test.
One of the key issues that educators have expressed with ISTEP is that they have not received test results in a timely manner. HB 1003 originally required all scores to be returned to the SBOE by July, but that was changed to Aug. 15 by the committee.
Zay said that a possible solution discussed in the Senate committee for this was separating the written portion of the test from the digital portion so that educators would be able to at least get some of the results back faster.
Overall, it seems that everybody is looking for something consistent to replace the ISTEP with.
“We need to be able to compare oranges to oranges, meaning we compare our students to others at their level, not the ones at Carmel,” Winter said.
Zay said that there will still need to be more work done on negotiating with testing companies, but that this bill allows State Superintendent Jennifer McCormick, as well as educators, to be involved with the process. He said that while this bill “isn’t perfect,” it is still a work in progress.