INDIANAPOLIS - A panel tasked with establishing Indiana’s accountability requirements as the state moves toward new federal education regulations met Monday to discuss how English-learning students be tested and how those scores should reflect on schools.
Specifically, the panel spent a lot of time talking about how long schools should be able to reap the benefits of getting an English learner up to proficiency, and when an English learner’s ISTEP scores should start counting. The new Every Student Succeeds Act passed by Congress allows for some new changes in education law.
Schools are allowed to include English learners who have passed proficiency tests to be counted in the school’s academic proficiency numbers two years after they are deemed proficient in English. The academic proficiency numbers factor into school grades and funding, among other things. The new federal requirements allow that time period to extend to four years, an opportunity of which the accountability panel was happy to take advantage.
The issue of when English learners should take the ISTEP spawned more discussion. The rules of ESSA give states two options. The first options: newly arrived students skip ISTEP in year one; count the student’s ISTEP performance in year two and then measure performance and growth in year three. The second option has students taking ISTEP right away but then just measures growth in year two, holding off on measuring a English learners performance on the ISTEP until year three.
Some panel members, including Veronique Beuoy, had reservations about throwing students who might not speak any English directly into the ISTEP their first year. She said the anxiety of taking a test they can’t read may be too much to handle.
“The idea of sitting there and not being able to read the test, it’s unsettling,” Beuoy said.
Most of the panel, however, thought the second option was better since students would be able to see growth in year two. Robert Lugo, a principal at Noblesville Elementary School, said showing growth would be better for the student’s psyche than giving them a pass in year one and then having them fail in year two.
While most of the panel agreed with Lugo, they wanted to wait and see what the 2016 ISTEP scores look like before reaching a final decision.