From ISTEP to ILearn: GOP test plan clears first legislative hurdle

A proposal to replace ISTEP won approval from Indiana’s House Education Committee on Thursday, putting what is likely another nail in the deeply unpopular exam’s coffin.

The committee, headed by Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, voted 10-2 to move forward with a testing system that would be called “ILearn.” If the plan becomes law, those tests would be given for the first time in 2019.

But lawmakers also expressed deep frustration with the constant debate about how to assess Indiana’s students—and acknowledged that there are still a lot of unanswered questions about how “ILearn” would work.

One question is whether it makes sense for Indiana to continue developing the test even though guidance from the U.S. Department of Education has been unclear—a reference to the recent pause on federal education rules during the presidential transition.

Behning, also the author of House Bill 1003, said it does.

“The law itself is still in place,” Behning said at the bill’s initial hearing on Tuesday.

The proposed system comes primarily from the recommendations of a state commission charged with figuring out what Indiana’s new testing system could look like. The biggest changes would be structural: The bill would have the test given in one block of time at the end of year rather than in the winter and spring.

For high school students, the state would go back to requiring end-of-course assessments in English, Algebra I and science, not a 10th-grade test like what the state introduced in 2016.

But for students, ILearn might not look look much different. If Indiana creates a test of its own, as it did with ISTEP, that’s especially likely, since Indiana already owns its test questions. The bill doesn’t spell out if the test must be Indiana-specific or off-the-shelf, but the exam would have to align with Indiana’s academic standards.

Committee members said they were fed up with the ever-changing, never-ending conversations about state tests and the academic standards they’re based on. They pointed to the rollercoaster of education policy changes that Indiana has been on since 2013, when the state ditched tests associated with the Common Core standards.

State-created tests like ISTEP, they said, are too costly, too unreliable and so frequently maligned by lawmakers and policymakers alike that parents, teachers and community members no longer have much faith in them.

Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, said he’d rather see the state go with an off-the-shelf test that is cheaper and allows Indiana to compare itself to other states. Other Democrats on the committee echoed his frustrations.

“I think a yes vote is passing up the opportunity to listen to our constituents who say, ‘We’ve had enough of the ISTEP and whatever else name we call it,’” said Rep. Sue Errington, D-Muncie, who voted against the bill Thursday. She was joined by DeLaney.

DeLaney, who passionately argued Thursday that ISTEP is educationally bankrupt, called on legislators to stop and take a hard look at whether the testing changes would ultimately be valuable to schools, teachers and students.

“I think we need to ask ourselves, what are we doing?” DeLaney said. “Amending this failing test is getting us nowhere.”

Chalkbeat is a not-for-profit news site covering educational change in public schools.