The Indiana House education committee passed a bill Thursday to replace the controversial ISTEP with a new test, ILEARN.
The committee, which voted 10-2, heard testimony Tuesday in support of and in opposition to House Bill 1003, and it discussed amendments Thursday. Only one amendment passed, one which concerned relatively inconsequential and technical terms of the bill, according to Committee Chair Rep. Robert Behning.
Chief of concerns from Democratic opposition was the question of how students would be tested in the transition period from ISTEP to ILEARN. Several of those testifying Tuesday acknowledged that the time required to switch to a new test could be lengthy.
Behning said Indiana would use the two-year extension option on its contract with Pearson, the test distributing company, to give students a test essentially the same as ISTEP. He said the transition-period test would be aligned with Indiana educational standards, which ISTEP was not. This is part of why ISTEP generated so much criticism.
The test was also criticized for not being “off the shelf,” or comparable to other state assessments, after Indiana chose to break from Common Core standards in 2013. A committee was created by the legislature last year to determine ways in which the test needed to be improved and altered.
“I think I’ve heard you say, basically, that we’re going to keep ISTEP for two more years, despite our legislature and despite these commissions,” Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, said to Behning.
Behning replied that federal law requires a state exam, but DeLaney persisted in his line of questioning.
“Is there a danger that if we change the name of that we’re misleading the public?” DeLaney asked.
Supporters of the bill, though, were pleased with some of the ways in which ILEARN would be different from its predecessor. For one, the bill suggests there only be one testing window at the end of the two years rather than two. It also gives Indiana educators an opportunity to grade the tests rather than recruiting graders via Craigslist, as they have in years past.
Nicole Fama, chairperson for the ISTEP replacement commission, emphasized her support for these points of the bill, as well as the fact that it would get test results back to teachers and students more quickly.
“We felt like this plan really represented all the work we did really well,” Fama said.
John O’Neal from the Indiana State Teachers Association was one of the later testifiers, and he kept it brief.
His perspective matched that of DeLaney, who worried aloud whether the work the legislature does for education is actually helpful or whether it’s wasting time.
“Let’s just take something that works, that’s good for kids, and move on,” O’Neal said. “We keep switching things around, and the constant flux is a distraction and disruption in the classroom, both for educators and students.”
