There’s simply no way to easily fix the mess that Indiana’s education system has become, but the state better start work in it quick.
It should be a top priority of the Indiana General Assembly when the session starts in January.
The recent news that Indiana’s A to F school grades will be far lower than previous years is only the most recent indication of disarray.
Official numbers haven’t been released, but preliminary ones show that the number of “A” schools dropped 50 percent and the number of “F” schools rose from 4 percent to 17 percent, according to the Associated Press.
The issue isn’t holding students and schools accountable. The issue is how education has become a political football in Indiana and Hoosier students keep being the ones who lose. It’s like in the cartoon “Peanuts,” when Lucy repeatedly pulls the football away from Charlie Brown and he ends up flat on his back with an “argh.” It’s happened time and time again in recent years.
Let’s start with CTB/McGraw Hill. The testing company had a four-year, $95 million contract. During that time, there were repeated problems with how it administered ISTEP+ for students in grades 3 to 8. In 2013, nearly 78,000 students were kicked off their testing modules on computers.
This is the last year for CTB/McGraw-Hill and that’s a good thing. There were technical difficulties again this year and schools still don’t have results from the spring test due to a testing glitch.
On the 394 math questions, students had to show their work. CTB/McGraw-Hill prepared 10 expected responses. Students found other paths to the right answer on at least 100 questions. That discovery this summer resulted in rescoring, according to the Times of Northwest Indiana.
In November, when parents could request rescoring of tests, there was a problem with the website during the few days the requests were to be logged. Go figure.
Despite that, 6 percent of parents requested rescoring this year, up from 3 percent last year, according to the Lafayette Courier-Journal. That resulted in 234,000 open-ended questions needing to be rescored.
Newspapers around the state are calling for an end to ISTEP, and we agree. It’s time for the statewide test to be tossed and for Hoosiers to start over.
It’s sad to say that. It really is. Hoosier lawmakers have been trying to get testing right for at least 25 years. Even in the late 1980s, State Rep. Philip Warner, R-Goshen, worked to help establish testing that made sense. The late lawmaker would be horrified to see what ISTEP has become and how it’s hurt Hoosier students and educators.
Indiana has a teacher shortage. Schools are struggling to find good teachers, and the Indiana Department of Education issued just 6,174 teacher licenses in 2013-14, compared to 16,578 just four years earlier. Nationwide, fewer teachers are entering the profession. Additionally, word has gotten out that teaching in Indiana isn’t as fulfilling as it once was. Thus, it’s tougher to find good people to be in the classroom with our students.
Education policy has a long history of being political in Indiana. The state abandoning Common Core State Standards, led by Gov. Mike Pence and Republican lawmakers, was political. How Pence and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz have squabbled has been political. Meanwhile, there’s a state assessment tool that has been dulled by politics and bad decisions.
By all means, hold students, teachers and schools accountable. But be smart about it.
Students take the test in the spring and find out the results in the fall after they’ve progressed into a new grade and classes. Add to that the ongoing problems with the test and it’s clear that change is needed.
For that to happen, a change in approach will be needed as well. With 2016 being a state election year, it could be tough to get Republicans and Democrats to agree on much in Indiana. But we can’t afford to not fix the harm being done to the state caused by political wrangling. We don’t expect Pence and Ritz to agree on much about Indiana education, but let’s hope they at least agree that the way forward isn’t by repeating the battles of the last three years.
Indiana needs strong schools to compete in the global marketplace. It needs to create good students, educate them through college, and convince them to stay here to work. That’s the kind of work organizations like Horizon Education Alliance and countless local teachers most want to do.
State politicians are getting in the way of that and need to stop. Hoosier schools — and the teachers, administrators and students who work together there — can’t afford a disastrous legislative session like last year’s.