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Local SBOE member Whicker hopes ISTEP questions have been answered

With ISTEP testing planned to start this week in Huntington County schools, two bills in the General Assembly addressing the controversial testing, length of the test itself as well as maneuvering by the governor’s office and Indiana Department of Education have raised question marks as to when testing will actually begin and exactly what areas students will be tested on.

It’s these questions that have puzzled Cari Whicker, a language arts teacher at Riverview Middle School and also a member of the Indiana State Board of Education. She says hopefully those questions now have answers.

The 2015 spring ISTEP schedule wasn’t released until late January, Whicker says, and the SBOE discussed the changes in the testing at its regular meeting on Feb. 4. One of those changes had made the testing time twice as long as it had been in the past – taking students between 11 and 12 hours to complete.

“Obviously, board members are concerned about the length of it because we had been told in August that they would need to add a couple of items and we’d been told that they weren’t sure yet how much time that would add,” Whicker says. “Me, as a teacher, I’m thinking, a couple of items? Well, if a test is 20 items long and you add two or three items, you’ve added 15 or 20 minutes or maybe half an hour and it shouldn’t be a big deal, and certainly not expecting to see the 12-hour time range we were looking at. … Can you picture third-grade students taking that long of a test?”

Whicker says that board meeting went very long with lots of discussion. At that point, she says, Indiana Department of Education Superintendent Glenda Ritz didn’t feel the test needed to be shortened.

Then, on Feb. 9, Gov. Mike Pence issued an executive order regarding the shortening of the ISTEP+ test and hired independent consultant Edward Roeber to review and make recommendations to shorten the test, at a cost of $22,000.

In a statement from the State Board of Education on Feb. 13, national assessment experts Dr. Edward Roeber and Dr. William Auty offered recommendations regarding how testing time for the ISTEP+ test can be reduced.

Following a special session of the SBOE on Feb. 13, Ritz issued a statement announcing that the Indiana Department of Education has reduced the length of the testing by slightly more than three hours for all students in all grades.

Ritz also announced she would seek legislative support to suspend the social studies portion of the test for students in grades five and seven, reducing the test by another hour. Removing the social studies portion was one of five recommendations made by Roeber and Auty.

“Social studies is normally tested in fifth and seventh (grades), and science is tested in fourth and sixth,” Whicker explains. “Social studies is not a federal mandate, so we don’t have to do it, although we like to. I like us to understand how important social studies is, but this just may not be the year.”

Senate Bill 62 would provide that the IDOE may waive the administration of the social studies component of the 2015 ISTEP program. On Monday, Feb. 23, the bill was passed in its third reading 94-0, after two amendments were added by the House. That bill was returned to the Senate, where it was passed the same day 50-0 and signed by Pence. It became effective immediately.

Another sacrifice, Whicker says, is releasing questions to parents, especially those who want to go over them with their children. Once a question is released, it cannot be used on the actual test.

“Hopefully it will be a one-time thing, but sacrifice a little of it in order to get the test time down. We just cannot test 8 and 9, 10 and 12-year-old kids 12 hours,” she says. “It’s just not effective. You’re not getting their best results, either. … Now we’re down to a five or six hour test.”

Students had been going over practice tests in preparation for the ISTEP, as well as piloting an entire test, the equivalent of taking two full tests prior to the actual ISTEP test itself. Whicker is in favor of splitting up the pilot test.

“If we can split up the test so that we’re piloting pieces of it – so everybody takes a full test, which will count for the students’ accountability, it will measure students’ growth, it will measure students’ abilities and give teachers the feedback they need,” Whicker says. “But then we’re going to split up the piloting so that everybody doesn’t have to pilot every single thing. And that’s where the big time savings come in.”

According to the Indiana Department of Education website, the window of ISTEP testing began Feb. 25 and goes until May 15, with different time periods for the various components.

At Riverview, students finished the practice test on Feb. 17 and are expected to start the math portion of the ISTEP exams today, Thursday, Feb. 26.

“For all of our nerves and all of our worry about it being rigorous, our kids just really stepped up to the plate and did a good job,” Whicker says. “I wish it had been the real thing. I’m optimistic they did a good job – I’m anxious to see how they did on the real thing.”

Ken Kline, the Huntington County Community School Corporation’s interim superintendent, was less optimistic. He says it’s not the kids’ fault; it’s the education system that should be held accountable.

“They’ve taken it too far, when they start tying teachers’ pay to their evaluations of how well their students do compared to students all over the state,” he says. “And we’re not equal. We’re not equal socio-economically across the state. It doesn’t make sense, and the pendulum has shifted so far in that direction that I think we’ve lost sight of our real purpose.”

Kline says it will be impossible to make the ISTEP test a valid measure of what students should have learned this year because of all the changes that have taken place.

“I’m telling you that up front before I see any of our test results,” he adds, noting that HCCSC teachers have done a wonderful job of education the district’s students. “If it’s not a valid measure then why are we even doing it?”

Kline says parents can opt to withhold their child from ISTEP testing by sending a written letter to their school principal. However, even if parents take their kids out of the program, the child’s absence is counted against the school’s final grade. If fewer than 95 percent of the school’s enrolled population participates in the test, the school is dunned with a “fail” grade, regardless of the test scores.

What it means in terms of state dollars lost for school is yet to be seen, Kline adds. A high-performing school, tied to teachers’ performance, can result in more funding.

“It’s really frustrating for all of us. In fact I communicated with our teachers, and I told them, ‘Don’t worry about it,’” he says. “What we’re doing and have in the process, we focus so much attention on ISTEP that we’ve taken the fun out of learning. If you take the fun out of learning and destroy the creativity that our students have, then that’s just a tragedy.”

Dates and times of each individual HCCSC school’s ISTEP testing sessions were sent home in school newsletters, Kline says. For more information about testing at a particular school, consult the newsletter or call the school office.