COMMENTARY: Who can trust ISTEP testing now?

Any stock? Any stock, at all?

Last week was — how did West Lafayette Superintendent Rocky Killion call it? — a train wreck that just kept piling up for the educational hierarchy at the Indiana Statehouse. In Indianapolis, too many would-be conductors were trying to grab the controls with one hand — starting with House Bill 1609, a Republican-led charge to strip Democratic state Superintendent Glenda Ritz of bits of her authority — while saving the other hand to point fingers of blame for an ISTEP test that had ballooned to twice its size since last year.

Tied to the tracks just ahead: Teachers, principals and superintendents — the ones parents tend to trust most — were in full freak out mode, unable to look away, as they braced for and calculated just how ugly the high-stakes disaster would be in a few weeks. Frozen computers during a dry run of ISTEP in several Greater Lafayette schools didn't inspire much more confidence.

It took an executive order from Gov. Mike Pence, a pair of outside consultants hired by the governor and an emergency meeting of the State Board of Education to start bringing the test down to a size, so Indiana's third- through eighth-graders aren't spending upwards of 12 hours over six days to get through a test that judges more than whether they're up to speed on English and math standards.

Through it all, Pence made a pitch that the ISTEP test could be shortened without compromising the validity of the test or the state's high-stakes A-F ratings for each school.