INDIANAPOLIS— Students and parents should expect this year’s ISTEP exam scores to be tabulated and finalized before the end of the month, an Indiana Department of Educationspokesman said Monday.
ISTEP results usually arrive in mailboxes around the end of May, but computerized disruptions with this year’s test — and a third-party review launched in its aftermath by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz — have delayed the process.
That review is expected to wrap up in July, at which point the Department of Education can finalize and mail ISTEP scores to school districts, said spokesman David Galvin.
The delay has prompted questions in recent weeks from parents who want their students’ scores, and shrugs from local officials who are not sure when they will be available.
“We don’t have anything, and we’ve not heard when we should expect anything,” said Susan McDowell Riley, an Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. deputy superintendent.
She said the district typically receives results in May and then, after about a week of stuffing and addressing envelopes, sends those results on to parents via mail.
During the school year, principals have their own methods for updating students and their parents on what to expect. In the summer, Riley said she uses the ConnectEd phone system to place automated calls to parents of students who took the ISTEP.
But without new information on when the third-party review will wrap up and when results will be finalized, she said, she has little to share.
“This is a really, really unusual year, and so I’ve not been able to do any of that,” she said.
The delay is a result of May incidents that led to 16 percent of Indiana students’ tests being delayed due to glitches with the online system operated by CTB/McGraw-Hill.
Ritz’s office is spending more than $53,000 to hire Richard Hill, the co-founder of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment to conduct a study, expected to last four to five weeks and wrap up in mid-July, to determine whether those students’ results are valid.
Once that’s done, she has said, the Department of Education will determine whether to scrap the full or partial results of some students. Those results are used to calculate teachers’ merit pay, schools’ A-through-F ratings and more.