Pence hires ISTEP consultant at $2,000 a day

Edward Roeber has until Feb. 19 to review the exam and offer DOE suggestions for cutting the nearly 12 hours of scheduled testing to something closer to the six hours of ISTEP tests students in grades three through eight took last year.

"Hoosier families can be assured that we will shorten this test," said Pence, a Republican.

Roeber is assessment director at the Michigan Assessment Consortium and managing partner at Assessment Solutions Group, a company that helps states pick standardized test vendors. He holds a doctorate in measurement and evaluation from the University of Michigan.

Indiana is set to pay him $10,000 for five days of work and $1,000 to travel from Michigan to Indianapolis to craft his initial recommendations, and another $11,000 to be available through December as the state prepares next year's ISTEP exam.

"I appreciate his willingness to bring his expertise to the table and craft a solution to this issue in a way that will be less burdensome to Hoosier students and families while still maintaining accountability for schools," Pence said.

Roeber's suggestions for cutting the test are not final. Only the Department of Education, led by Glenda Ritz, the Democratic state superintendent of public instruction, is permitted to change the test.

DOE officials said Tuesday the longer-than-usual test duration is due to federal requirements that came along with Pence's 2014 decision to scuttle Indiana's adoption of Common Core educational standards and replace them with new state standards that Pence repeatedly has described as "uncommonly high."

According to Assistant State Superintendent Danielle Shockey, the new Indiana standards required creation of a new test aligned to those standards, and since student scores on the new test no longer can be compared to the old ISTEP, extra questions are required this year to form a basis for measuring student growth as mandated by federal and state law.

She said next year's exam will be shorter, but likely not as short as the old ISTEP because the new standards require students answer more open-ended questions, which take more time.

Shockey dismissed Pence's implication that students will be sitting for hours on end taking ISTEP exams. The test duration cited by the governor is the maximum test time set so students don't feel rushed; most students finish test sections early, she said.

Students also typically don't take the entire test all at once. During February and March, principals and teachers have between 13 and 15 school days to administer nine test sections, ranging in length from 20 minutes to 55 minutes.

In the April-May portion of ISTEP, schools have between 10 and 15 days to give 10 test sections ranging in length from 5 minutes to 65 minutes.

Shockey said DOE will look at whatever recommendations Roeber comes up with, but nearly everything on the test is necessary to comply with federal law -- except the social studies portion, given only to fifth- and seventh-graders, required by an Indiana State Board of Education rule.

The board is expected to meet Friday to discuss the test's length, but cannot rescind the social studies rule in time to affect the Feb. 25 start of ISTEP testing. The Republican-controlled General Assembly could act expeditiously to delete that requirement, if it wanted.

However, that only would reduce the test time for ISTEP Part I by just 25 minutes in two grade levels, and it would contradict recent steps taken by the Legislature to require all students pass the U.S. Citizenship Exam to graduate high school.

Altman said DOE has been upfront with the Pence-appointed State Board of Education in telling them the new test would be longer than prior years. He said board members were informed in August the test would have more questions, though the test length only was finalized Jan. 26.

Pence and Republican-legislative leaders claimed Monday they were blindsided by the longer test and personally blamed Ritz. The governor's legislative agenda calls for reducing Ritz's authority by removing her as chairwoman of the State Board of Education, among other changes.

Altman said he doesn't know why Pence didn't get word about the ISTEP exam sooner when his board members were told last summer, and the governor's sudden outrage only has sown confusion among Hoosier school leaders, teachers, parents and students.

"For the governor to claim that he only recently learned of this, to be honest it's either politically malicious or it's a serious sign of staff incompetence," Altman said.