Now what? Legislators get question of what will replace ISTEP exams back in their laps

A legislative panel failed in its six-month assignment to suggest a replacement for the much-maligned ISTEP test taken by 400,000 schoolchildren each year.

Instead, the group of 23 educators and lawmakers is making broad, expected recommendations in light of complaints about the test’s failure to produce usable results.

The panel's report to lawmakers, who voted to kill ISTEP earlier this year, recommends keeping some form of assessment but calls for a shorter test that is easier to administer and has a faster turnaround time for scores.

The annual ISTEP tests, which cost about $30 million to administer, have been plagued by technology glitches and months-long delays in returning results. The Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus exams are given to students in third through eighth grades, as well as high school sophomores.

Panel Chairwoman Nicole Fama, principal of the George H. Fisher School 93 in Indianapolis, called the study “long and tedious.” But, she noted, it had yielded a framework for a federally mandated test.

Outgoing state schools chief Glenda Ritz, who lost her reelection bid earlier this month, cast one of two dissenting votes to issue the report.

“The recommendations adopted today will do nothing to shorten the time of the test and will not save Hoosiers any money nor reduce the high-stakes associated with ISTEP,” Ritz said in a statement.

A Democrat, Ritz objected to changes made to the report outside its meeting Tuesday. She was shot down by House Education Chairman Bob Behning, a Republican (of Indianapolis), who said the panel had ample time to debate proposals during six months of meetings that often failed to produce any consensus.

“We spent all of one meeting trying to come up with a vision statement,” he told fellow panel members.

The sentence opening the four-page report calls on the state to develop a “student-centered” test that provides a meaningful gauge of students' proficiency and readiness for college or a career.

The panel warned that coming up with a new test could take two years, but it offered some recommendations. For example, it suggested that tests now given during two windows, in March and April, be moved to May and given once, with results expected within a month.

Also, it recommends that sophomores be required to pass end-of-course assessments in algebra and English in order to graduate. Students who fail would be offered a remedial course, in line with existing requirements that only some schools follow.

Behning, who will oversee test-related legislation in the House, said he expects changes in federal education policy under President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to return more authority for education to states.

But he noted that Trump’s pick of school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos for education secretary likely won’t diminish the push for more test-based accountability.

“I don’t see it going away,” he said.