Indiana legislative leaders said they’re prepared to ram through legislation to make the state’s ISTEP test shorter, but they won’t consider Superintendent Glenda Ritz’s proposal to pause the school grading system for one year.
“A number of schools” reported freezing issues Thursday during the test run, which was designed to ensure that the system worked smoothly when the online portion of the standardized test is given to 470,000 Indiana students in the coming weeks.
The State Board of Education will consider a proposal to suspend accountability grades and scrap portions of the ISTEP+ exam as it grapples with concerns about increased testing time for students.
Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction Danielle Shockey said it wasn’t clear what changes could be made before the first possible day of the testing period arrives on Feb. 25.
The legislation would overturn the current law in which the state's elected superintendent of public instruction – now Democrat Glenda Ritz – automatically chairs the board.
The governor announced Monday he would look for ways to curtail Indiana's revamped statewide assessment test from the up to 12½ hours it's been projected to take.
Department of Education data show the total time for administering the ISTEP+ test will more than double for all grades, topping out at 12 hours, 30 minutes for third-graders.
Majority Republicans in the House and Senate are pushing forward with bills to revamp the Indiana Board of Education and strip power from the state superintendent even as Democrats complain the GOP is only playing politics.
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.
Tensions continued to flare Monday as the Senate Rules Committee debated and then passed legislation to alter the composition of the Indiana State Board of Education and demote the superintendent as its chair.
Glenda Ritz's supporters protest that Republicans are disenfranchising a state electorate that gave Ritz 57,000 more votes than GOP Gov. Mike Pence received in the same election.
Fortune Academy, a Lawrence school serving children from first through 12th grades with such learning differences as dyslexia and ADD, has received a $500,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc.
Carpe Diem Meridian charter school in Indianapolis offered $100 Marsh grocery gift cards to anyone who referred a student who enrolled — an incentive that some critics say went too far.
The elected state superintendent of public instruction would lose authority over several areas of education policy under Republican-backed proposals approved Thursday by an Indiana House committee.
An Indiana House committee has advanced a Republican-led proposal for shifting authority over education policy away from the elected state superintendent of public instruction.
House Bill 1638 would give significant new powers to the State Board of Education to intervene in schools earning a D or F grade for at least four straight years—even creating new schools within a school district.
A wide-ranging bill discussed Tuesday would give the Indiana State Board of Education authority over testing, standards, student data, state takeovers and teacher evaluation.
The Lilly Endowment has now given more than $14 million to Indianapolis-based The Mind Trust to fund programs that recruit and train teachers for work in schools in the city’s high-need neighborhoods.
The Senate Appropriations Committee heard almost two hours of testimony Thursday from representatives both for and against the governor’s suggested $1,500 per-student grant to the state’s public charter schools.
Rep. Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis, formed Berkshire Education Strategies last June to represent out-of-state clients in the education field.
