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State House Passes Bill for ISTEP Replacement

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Indiana students could eventually be sitting for a new standardized test. It’s called I-LEARN, and it would replace the current, decades-old ISTEP. House Bill 1003 proposing the new exam passed through the Indiana House yesterday with a vote of 67 to 31. It requires that students in grades 3-8 take a standardized exam. Students in grades 9 through 12 would take an end of course assessment at least once a year. In 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act requiring students to take some type of standardized test. But not everyone feels that this new exam is the solution to effective assessments. Monroe County Community School Corporation School Board Member Sue Wanzer has another strategy in mind.

“I think if we’re going to do some kind of statewide standardized test, we need as a state to decide what the purpose of the test is and what the goal for the results are, and then design a test to fit that.”

Wanzer goes on to say that learning in the classroom should be assessed by teachers. She also says the test creates a problem directly related to a school’s economic demographics.

“For a lot of us, we know that standardized testing like that really is testing poverty in our schools. Schools with high poverty don’t do as well. Schools with low poverty do much better.”

And that’s one common criticism of the ISTEP exam. Others are about the delay in delivering results. Teachers and schools often do not know their student’s scores until months after the exam when the academic year is over. In recent years, the exam became computer-based. Technological problems set the exam back even further. Now, some administrators are saying ISTEP is no longer a reliable measure of student learning. Representative Robert Behning says the bill addresses these issues. I-LEARN will be shorter and results will come back sooner. And he says teachers will not be evaluated by the results.

“The state does not mandate what level of involvement by the I-LEARN or ISTEP is used in an evaluation. It is really determined at a local level and it has been since the one passed in 2011.”

The bill moves on to the Indiana Senate. If it passes, I-LEARN will begin in the 2018-2019 school year.

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