Could things possibly get any worse for ISTEP, the dysfunctional arbiter of all that is good and bad in the standardized world of Indiana’s public schools?
Last week, as lawmakers kicked around metaphors about dead horses, the idea of rescoring a thoroughly tainted test was being swept to the curb. The test already had been a disaster from the start in early 2015 and only got worse with scoring delays and eventually reports of grading errors that kept results out of schools’ hands for close to a year.
Senators stripped a costly rescoring of a test from an education bill, and talk ramped up about finding something better to serve as the basis of schools’ A-F grades and helps calculate some part of teacher raises. Senate President David Long stated the obvious to The Indianapolis Star: “I just think we can chase our tails on that forever. I think we need to put ISTEP in our rearview mirror as soon as we can.”
And all the teachers say, “Amen.”
But hold on. If by “could things possible get worse for the ISTEP” you really mean, “could things possibly be better timed for the dreams of a local opt-out plan,” you might be on to something.
On Feb. 16, three Greater Lafayette school superintendents told their boards that they wanted to go for a locally driven accountability system that would sidestep what they called a one-size-fits-all testing scheme that boils things down to a single grade for each school.
The goal in the coming year: Work with business leaders and the Purdue University College of Education to develop something that shows how Lafayette, Tippecanoe and West Lafayette schools stack up in a way the community can trust.