School leaders around Indiana have been increasing criticism of the state's standardized test as they brace for the release of scores that will show a double-digit drop in passing rates for students.
The State Board of Education on Wednesday approved a permanent committee for the high-stakes standardized test after broad criticism and several snafus.
Eleven weeks after the Indianapolis Public Schools agreed to give teachers a dramatic raise—the first in five years for many of them—the teachers are still waiting.
Sen. Mark Stoops, D-Bloomington, on Wednesday called for the Indiana legislature to take the dramatic step of passing a bill next week to protect schools and teachers from possible consequences of an expected steep drop in ISTEP scores.
The State Board of Education board voted Wednesday to approve benchmarks that will see about 65 percent of students pass the language arts section, with about 59 percent passing the math section.
State leaders will tackle questions about a possible teacher shortage and work on politically-charged questions about ISTEP.
State Board of Education spokesman Marc Lotter blamed that delay on a Department of Education report provided Tuesday night raising questions about potential differences in difficulty between the online and paper versions of the test.
The State Board of Education is poised to vote on a recommendation from educator panels that would reduce ISTEP passing rates about 16 percentage points in English and 24 percentage points in math, compared with 2014.
Indiana's Attorney General dealt a major blow to a proposal by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz that would spare schools from being penalized for low scores on this year's ISTEP exams.
Indiana's much-maligned standardized student test will likely be hours shorter in length when more than 400,000 students take it next year.
The president of McGraw-Hill Education CTB told State Board of Education members Wednesday that changes made to this spring's ISTEP test have pushed back its grading work.
The waiver frees the state from some federal testing and school progress rules and lets Indiana keep greater control of how it spends about $230 million in federal education funding.
Some senators had pushed a bill calling for replacement of the exam with an "off-the-shelf" test in hopes of saving millions of dollars. But House members favored keeping ISTEP in place while undertaking a special review of a possible overhaul.
School districts across Indiana are delaying the second round of ISTEP+ testing or asking the Department of Education for permission to administer the exam with paper and pencil after experiencing continuing problems with an online server.
Lawmakers are at odds over a proposal to scrap the ISTEP+ standardized test for an off-the-shelf model. Meanwhile, schools are preparing to take the online portion of the high-stakes test, which has been glitchy in the past.
A proposal to replace ISTEP with an off-the-shelf national test was derailed Tuesday as an Indiana House committee sent the idea to a summer committee for further study.
Students at charter schools achieved twice as much growth on reading and math tests as similar students at local traditional public schools, according to a new study from Stanford University.
Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz is blasting a state recommendation to award nearly $134 million to six vendors to develop and administer tests for state's students.
Indiana needs to improve communication between its education leaders, hire more staff and take other steps to prevent a repeat of the “thorny issues” surrounding the length of this year’s ISTEP+ exam, two consultants hired by the state say.
Two bills already have passed the Senate that push the state in the direction of a national test.
