Lawmakers consider national test to replace ISTEP

Indiana lawmakers and educators on Wednesday praised the idea of replacing ISTEP with a national “off-the-shelf” test.

Senate Bill 566, authored by Sen. Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville, and Sen. Ryan Mishler, R-Bremen, would halt an effort to create a new ISTEP, instead directing the state to use a national test beginning in the 2016-17 school year.

It also would eliminate high school end-of-course exams, starting in 2015-16, and the state’s third-grade reading test, IREAD. Under the bill, the state’s new testing program would be called BEST — benchmarking excellence student testing.

The bill is scheduled to go before the in the Senate Education Committee for a vote next week.

Kenley said the idea to scrap an effort underway at the Indiana Department of Education to forge a contract for a testing company to create a new generation of state tests raised cost concerns when state Superintendent Glenda Ritz presented her budget to the State Budget Committee in December. The proposal said writing new state tests could cost roughly $65 million — about $30 million more than it has in recent years.

“Do we have to give so many tests and does it have to cost this much?” Kenley said. “And instead of having one special test, the Indiana test, can’t we take some off-the-rack test and just give it to everybody, and wouldn’t it cost less money?”

The department is awaiting testing company proposals to make Indiana’s new 2015-16 tests. The rewrite of the tests is intended to more strongly connect the exams to the state’s new more rigorous academic standards. ISTEP is a currently created by California-based CTB/McGraw-Hill.

Indiana had been on a plan to adopt Common Core standards, which were shared by 45 other states, and use a exam created by some of those states designed to determine if students had learned the content covered by Common Core as Indiana’s state test.

But after a backlash against Common Core, viewed by some critics as giving too much control over the state’s education system to policymakers outside of Indiana, the state backed out of both the standards and the idea of sharing a test with other states.

Gov. Mike Pence ordered Indiana to withdraw from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, which was crafting the shared test. Then last year, a Republican-led effort, supported by Kenley, voided Indiana’s adopton of Common Core standards, leading to a fast-tracked creation and adoption of new academic standards that went into effect last summer.

But, on Wednesday, Kenley said he favors using a national test now, perhaps even one originally designed for Common Core. Everyone needs to use some common sense in this situation, he said.

“We’re trying to streamline the testing systems, and we’re trying to reduce the time of testing,” Kenley said. “If you have the testing program that works the way you want it to, then you should be willing to go back and have your standards fit what you think is an appropriate test.”

Mishler said one option Indiana would have is a test by the Northwest Evaluation Association that many schools already use to gather information about student progress in preparation for ISTEP. It could be modified slightly and could replace ISTEP, end-of-course exams and IREAD all in one, depending on whether the test is given to grades 3-8 or 3-10, Kenley said.

John Barnes, a spokesman for Ritz and the education department, backed the bill.

“It could very well be that we could adapt already existing tests,” Barnes said. “The big issue has been that since the legislation that was passed here said we needed to come up with an Indiana-specific, Indiana-designed to test to meet our Indiana-specific standards, that became our challenge. The idea here might very well be to adopt something that is more off-the-shelf and come up with a way to make that work for us.”