EDITORIAL: State fails students through its inability to agree on testing

During the coming school year, Indiana students will take an ISTEP test being put together now by CTB/McGraw-Hill, the creator of the existing ISTEP, and the sometimes troubled maker of Indiana’s statewide standardized testing. Indiana wanted to delay the next statewide test for a year, but the federal government has told Indiana that if it wants to maintain its waiver of the No Child Left Behind law, it will need to give a standardized test this coming school year.

However, according to The Associated Press, Indiana will need to come up with a contractor to create another standardized test for the 2015-16 school year.

These next two years should be an adventure for Indiana teachers and students, preparing them for these two tests, the result of official Indiana trying to survive its decision to drop out of Common Core, its goofy decision to create its own educational standards instead of going with the state-by-state plan created by the nation’s states.

What is going on here is that Indiana is struggling to keep its federal waiver of the federal No Child Left Behind. If Indiana loses its waiver, it could lose out on some $200 million in federal “Title I” funds it has been receiving each year. That would be a shame. In the meantime, Indiana’s educational hierarchy continues to do battle, we suspect at a loss eventually to teachers, students and local school districts.

On Monday, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, the Indiana Education Roundtable, and Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz were at odds over Ritz’s proposal to add a reading requirement to the new tests. Courier & Press staff writer Chelsea Schneider reported that a majority of the round-table, along with Pence, opposed Ritz’s proposal to require the next tests to include the separate reading score for Indiana students.

Monday’s meetings concluded with the Indiana State Board of Education saying it did not feel informed about Ritz’s department efforts to retain the state’s federal waiver.

Ritz maintains her department is committed to maintaining the waivers.

But state board member Dan Elsener told Ritz, “You have us in a very difficult position. It is unacceptable in the professional world.”

What we have now is McGraw-Hill and the state education department preparing for a statewide standardized test for students to take this coming school year.

Cross your fingers that it all works out, and that teachers and students are able to properly prepare for the test as an accurate measurement of their academic performance.

Otherwise, parents and teachers are going to be hot, and who could blame them?