The ISTEP test has become a slow-motion train wreck. Ugly, yet we find it difficult to turn away, especially since our children are riding the trains.
Sometime this month the state will drop a bomb on school districts throughout the state, including districts in Grant County. A new, more difficult test was given this year with little figuring on how a different and more difficult test could be fairly adapted in a public school system that measures success largely based on year-to-year comparative testing.
Indiana Department of Education expects the passing rates for the new ISTEP, to fall by about 16 percentage points in the English/language arts section and 24 percentage points in the math section compared to last year tests.
The scoring is important to the individual lives of students and the careers of administrators and teachers – including teacher pay.
Administrators say they don’t believe it be fair to compare this year’s tougher test scores to previous scores. We agree. Most specifically Marion Community Schools Superintendent Brad Lindsay told parents in a letter that having “fewer children reaching that higher bar this first year is not a failure. It is a reflection of higher standards and new challenges.”
We also all know how fair life generally is so we sympathize with Lindsay, who continues to build a good school corporation.
Marion had been making much academic progress. We expect that good progress has continued to be made and the educational opportunity in our city’s public schools should be among the best a child could get in Indiana. None of us are likely to be able to judge that by the upcoming ISTEP scores.
Partisanship is part of governing in a democracy but some matters cause great harm if partisanship is not restrained by a mutual understanding that we all are really in the same boat together. Foreign policy in time of war is an example on the federal level and education policy carries such gravity at the state level.
This is what happens when politics supersedes common sense. Provisions should have been made to transition to a new more difficult test that would have maintained a degree of accountability for schools and teachers based on other measurements of success until a new baseline was set with the a tougher ISTEP. The changes and how to deal with them should have been bipartisan even in the face of the commanding power now in the hands of Republicans.
We are pleased that Republican Gov. Mike Pence supported Democrats calling for omitting ISTEP scores from teacher pay evaluations and school A-F grades this year.
Perhaps parents will be as open minded about the performance of their children and their children’s schools.
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