State schools
Superintendent Glenda Ritz told the State Board of Education on Friday
that her Department of Education could cut about 2 ½ hours from the
language arts section of this year's ISTEP+ exams and 40 minutes from
mathematics sections by reducing the number of questions that are being
reviewed for use in future tests.
The moves come
after parents and educators protested that testing times for the exam had
doubled to about 12 hours after a redesign to align with new state
standards that were created after Indiana withdrew from the national
Common Core standards last year.
Ritz told the
State Board of Education that she believed the changes, made in
consultation with two outside experts hired this week by Gov. Mike Pence,
could be implemented before about 450,000 students in grades 3 through 8
begin taking the tests later this month.
"I want to bring
clarity to it," she said. "I want to make sure that we're reducing the
test at the same time we're going to have validity and reliability."
The ISTEP+ exam
is an annual test that measures student growth. Its scores are used to
grade schools on the state's "A-F" system, evaluate teachers and determine
their pay.
The state had
hoped to use this year as a transition for the new test, but the U.S.
Department of Education rejected that request. As a result, the new exam
also includes pilot questions, which state education officials say will
now be split up so that students face half as many.
Edward Roeber,
one of the consultants hired by Pence, said he believed the test would
still be reliable and called the changes planned by Ritz a "substantial
reduction" in testing time from the previous 12-hour level.
"My goal was to
get to a single digit, instead of double digits, and we'll accomplish
that," he said.
Ritz said she
would seek to cut another hour in testing time for students in grades 5
and 7 by suspending the social studies portion of the exam. That step will
require approval from the General Assembly because the test is set in
state law.
Friday's action
follows a week of squabbling among Ritz's Department of Education, the
governor's office and legislative leaders about why this year's exam is so
much longer and what steps might be taken to shorten it.
Ritz proposed a
one-year suspension of using the ISTEP+ results for school and teacher
evaluations, but board members voted to remove that from the agenda.