Parents, administrators encounter technical difficulties asking for ISTEP rescore

Parents had five days this week — Nov. 9 to Nov. 13 — to look at their child’s preliminary ISTEP score and decide if it needed to be rescored. It’s the first time the responsibility of requesting a score review has been up to parents. In previous years, schools had access to the tentative grades and requested rescores.

As a result, schools scrambled to inform parents and offer help. The only way to ask for a rescore was by getting on the CTB website and logging in to the Indiana Parent Network.

“That’s a worry. To assume that you have the technology that you would need to do so in your home and a day scheduled where you can make that happen,” Diersing said.

The window of five days, the trouble with the website and the limited time to get assistance from the CTB Help Desk — it’s open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday — doesn’t sit well with Diersing.

“I have so many concerns about the reasonableness of asking families in a five day or less period to be able to navigate the system, which is tough to do if education is your field, much less if it is not your field,” she said.

Judy DeMuth, superintendent of Monroe County Community School Corp., concurs that the Indiana Parent Network isn’t the most user-friendly.

“The website for the request system is difficult to navigate, often taking more than 30-45 minutes to complete,” she said. “Counselors at our middle schools, along with the principals at our elementary schools, have worked with parents who have requested rescores.”