Testing expert Ed Roeber travelled to Indiana Tuesday to speak with the panel re-writing the state\’s assessment. Roeber encourage the panel to spend at least two years creating and implementing the new assessment system and not rush into it, like Indiana did in 2014. (Claire McInerny/Indiana Public Broadcasting)
When the 2017 General Assembly convenes in January, it will tackle one of the biggest education issues of the year: replacing the state’s assessment, the ISTEP+. Last session, the General Assembly passed a bill eliminating the current ISTEP+ and saying the replacement must be in effect by spring 2018.
This gives the legislature, the Department of Education, a test vendor and school districts less than a year to create and implement the new test.
It’s a road the state has been down before.
This started in March 2014, when Gov. Mike Pence and the legislature ditched Common Core standards and the PARCC assessment. The exit came without a contingency plan. And because of a waiver the state had with the federal government regarding the old No Child Left Behind law, they were legally obligated to give the test that year.
So the DOE and the State Board of Education wrote new standards in a few months and had test vendor, CTB, create an assessment to match.
Schools began preparing for test administration in Spring 2015, and many educators complained. The new 2015 version of the ISTEP+ was significantly longer than previous years. That’s because when a new test is created, best practice is to field test the questions on the test to make sure they are properly assessing a student’s knowledge. That field testing is usually spread out, but because of the short timeline, the pilot questions were tacked onto the real assessment, making it longer.
Parents and teachers were outraged at the amount of time students spent testing, and the discussion quickly turned into public accusations from the SBOE, the DOE and the governor’s office about whose fault it was.
Eventually, Governor Pence signed an executive order shortening the test, and the DOE worked with testing experts to figure out how to do make that happen.
Just over a year later, we’re back in a similar situation. If legislators keep the 2018 implementation deadline, here’s how the workflow of the test creation will play out: the General Assembly crafts a law that dictates how the new test looks. That isn’t finalized until late April or May of 2017 when the legislative session ends. Then the Department of Education, now under Jennifer McCormick, hires a test vendor to create the assessment. The vendor has a few months to create the test and the DOE has a few months to prepare schools for the change before it must be implemented spring 2018.
The legislation passed last year that eliminates the test, also created the ISTEP+ panel that was tasked with creating suggestions for re-writing the assessment.
The panel took testimony from Ed Roeber, a testing consultant based in Michigan who previously consulted with Indiana when the test was too long. He told the panel that the state should take at least two years to fully plan and implement a new test.
“When things get rushed, then you take shortcuts,” Roeber said at the October meeting of the ISTEP+ panel.
The panel issued its final report this week, and it does include a suggestion the state retain the current version another year and take two years to re-write and implement its replacement.
House Education Committee Chair Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, and Senate Education Chair Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, have both said they would discuss changing the deadline. The legislature could re-write that deadline during this year’s legislative session.
As a school choice advocate, DeVos’ has clear priorities – expanding state private school vouchers, education tax credits and charter schools – but how much impact does the Secretary of Education have on individual state policies?
Let’s take a look at the U.S. Secretary of Education job to find out.
1. What does the U.S. Secretary of Education do?
The Secretary of Education is a dual role. As head of the U.S. Department of Education, the secretary advises the department, and proposes and executes legislation that deals with federal influence over education policy.
The secretary is also a member of the president’s cabinet. In that capacity, the secretary is the lead adviser to the President on federal policies, programs and activities related to education in the United States.
And, interestingly, the secretary of education is 15th in line of succession to the president.
2. How much influence do they have over individual states’ education policy?
Education is primarily a state and local responsibility in the United States. Less than 9 percent of the money spent on education comes from the federal government.
That’s where those guidance and regulations come in – the department can attach strict stipulations on what they expect to see in return for that money. That was one of the most controversial aspects of President Barack Obama administration’s Race to the Top grants, a series of grants created to spur education innovation and reforms in states and local districts.
In return for those federal grants, the administration asked for specific things, including the adoption of common standards, school turnaround initiatives, tying tests to teacher evaluations and charter school expansion. They were controversial. Critics said the federal government overstepped its bounds by enticing states to adopt certain measures. Supporters say it helped spark a wave of reform across the country.
The department also oversees civil rights matters in education – it can pull funding from districts if it identifies discrimination based on race, disability, sexual orientation, income or gender identity.
3. Can the Secretary of Education make policy?
No.
Instead, they’re in charge of implementing and overseeing laws. Laws written by Congress and signed by the president.
A clear example of this is the new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act. Congress passed it as a rewrite to No Child Left Behind. It was then signed into law by President Obama.
Now, the education department is in charge of enacting that law and overseeing implementation.
4. So, can Trump’s pick actually privatize U.S. schools?
It’s highly unlikely. There are a number of factors at play.
Remember, less than 9 percent of spending on public K-12 schools comes from the federal government. All of that money is already earmarked for specific groups of children, like students with disabilities and students from low-income families.
So, where will the money for President-elect Trump’s $20 billion school choice proposal actually come from? Well, it’s still a question.
The education department could offer grants that ask for school choice expansion, in return. It could be similar to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top grants. But getting the $20 billion into a budget passed by Congress may be very hard.
Trump’s plan also asks states to pledge another $110 billion to school choice. That may be infeasible, Kevin Carey explains in the New York Times.
States don’t have that kind of money lying around. The only plausible source is existing school funding. But even if Ms. DeVos were to find a willing governor and state legislature, it’s not that easy. Roughly half of all nonfederal education funding comes from local property taxes raised by over 13,000 local school districts. They and their elected representatives will have a say, too.
This is where the intersection of geography and politics makes any national voucher plan much more difficult to enact. The practicality of school choice is highly related to population density. Children need to be able to get from home to school and back again every day. In a large metropolis with public transportation, there could be dozens of schools within reasonable travel distance of most families. In a small city, town or rural area, there will be few or none.
And population density, as Americans saw in the last election, is increasingly the dividing line of the nation’s politics. A significant number of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters live in sparsely populated areas where school choice is logistically unlikely. At the same time, many of the municipalities where market reforms are theoretically much easier to put in voted overwhelmingly against the president-elect.
State superintendent Glenda Ritz was one of two people on the 23-person ISTEP panel who voted against the final recommendation. Ritz says this plan was too broad and doesn’t ask legislators to make dramatic changes from a testing system many are unhappy with. (photo credit: Kyle Stokes/StateImpact Indiana)
The ISTEP+ panel, a 23-person committee tasked with writing a recommendation for re-writing the state’s assessment system, voted on a final version Tuesday. Rather than promoting the sweeping changes that many, including the legislature wanted, the final plan offers slight differences from the state’s current test.
The plan came in before the Dec. 1 deadline and will now be given to lawmakers for the 2017 General Assembly.
The most notable changes from the current assessment system:
Administering a test once a year, rather than twice
Putting that testing window at the end of the school year in May
Proposing that other Indiana teachers grade the assessment
The recommendations also call for a shorter assessment and quicker turnaround of results, but do not specify how to achieve that.
Nicole Fama, the panel’s chair and principal at George H. Fisher School 93 in Indianapolis, says she wanted the group’s final recommendation to be broad for a reason.
“We’re not the experts, we’re not the psychometricians, we wouldn’t know exactly where those things are to meet state requirements, so we left that to them,” Fama says.
The General Assembly voted to eliminate the current ISTEP+ by 2018, after parents, teachers and legislators voiced overwhelming dissatisfaction with the test.
Lawmakers formed this committee to help craft its replacement, but its final recommendation is conservative in its changes to the current assessment system.
Over the last six months, one of the main goals of the panel was to reduce the time students spend testing. One of the suggestions to achieve this was eliminating the IREAD-3 test, an assessment that tests reading skills in third grade. Many on the panel supported this suggestion, but it is not present in the final recommendation.
Fama says, while many want to see that happen, the group decided not to address it in their plan. They will instead ask the State Board of Education to advocate against that test.
But House Education Chair Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, says getting rid of IREAD-3 might not be the best move. He says, ever since Indiana introduced IREAD-3, fourth grade student scores on the federal assessment, NAEP, showed more growth than most states.
Behning says he is willing to consider other options, but that assessment put a greater focus on reading in classrooms.
“It would be my preference at this point in time that we look at options but I think IREAD-3, if you look at the performance we have right now in NAEP, let’s not set ourselves back,” Behning says.
The plan passed 21-2, and the two votes against it were placed by state superintendent Glenda Ritz and Ayana Wilson-Coles, a teacher at Eagle Creek Elementary School in Pike Township.
In a statement, Ritz said this plan wasn’t a dramatic change from the current testing system, and she was disappointed that the group didn’t recommend more detailed recommendations for the legislature.
“Earlier this year, Indiana’s General Assembly said that the time had finally come for an end to the inefficient, expensive, pass-fail, high-stakes ISTEP+ system,” Ritz said in a statement. “The recommendations adopted today will do nothing to shorten the time of the test and will not save Hoosiers any money nor reduce the high-stakes associated with ISTEP+.”
Before the vote, Ritz also raised issue with the fact that this final draft of the plan was compiled through email and didn’t allow for the group to discuss it before voting on it.
These email discussions determined language in the final draft that was not otherwise debated in a public meeting space.
Fama acknowledges that left these discussions were held out of the public eye, but she says that tactic was necessary to meet the deadline.
“I think it was as transparent as it could be with our timeline to meet Dec. 1 and get things going,” Fama says.
This recommendation is only a jumping off point in a longer process to re-write the test. It is only a recommendation. The General Assembly has full control over the future the assessment.
Behring says, when the legislature convenes in January, he will use these recommendations as he and other legislators craft a bill to create a new testing system.
“I can generally support almost everything that’s in the report,” Behning says. “I think we’re going to make some really positive movement forward.”
The ISTEP panel will issue its final recommendation on how to re-write the state assessment. (photo credit: David Hartman /Flickr)
Tuesday is the last state ISTEP panel meeting, and members are expected to vote on a plan to overhaul the state’s assessment system. The group will submit this plan to the legislature as a recommendation.
During the 2016 General Assembly, lawmakers voted to get rid of the current ISTEP+ assessment. The legislation also created the 23-person panel – educators, parents, legislators and other stakeholders – to come up with a recommendation for its replacement.
That panel met every month, since May, to craft a recommendation before a Dec. 1 deadline. Though Nov. 29’s meeting is the last, it’s not quite clear what we can expect from the recommendation.
When the group convened earlier in the month, members brought different ideas and plans for what the test could look like. It reviewed them at the meeting but no decisions were made. Chair and Indianapolis Public Schools principal Nicole Fama decided to have those conversations via email. Tomorrow we’ll have our first look at the products of those conversations.
What we have seen so far
One of the first plans came from state superintendent Glenda Ritz and the Department of Education, in October. Highlights include eliminating IREAD-3, enacting computer adaptive tests and the possibility for multiple administrations throughout the year.
A few weeks ago, a group of eight panel members created their own proposal and presented it for consideration. Some of their suggestions:
State will provide funds for a formative assessment of the school district’s choosing (a test, like NWEA, schools can use to gauge if students are on track).
Only one administration of the summative assessment (like ISTEP). Right now students take it in two sittings.
Eliminate IREAD-3.
Three end-of-course exams at the high school level.
Different perspectives
At the last meeting, the group also reviewed various pieces of feedback from panel members regarding the test. Suggestions included reducing testing time, cutting IREAD and reducing the social studies and science portions of any assessment.
But there were a few things the entire group wasn’t on board with. Experts suggest online testing is the best way to administer a test, but some on the panel still want to administer a test with paper and pencil. The group also differs on how often there should be testing. Some want to streamline it into one time a year, others want to spread it throughout the year, administering it in shorter chunks.
After the recommendation
The final recommendation will be given to the 2017 General Assembly. It does not mandate anything. The legislature will craft legislation that establishes the new assessment.
The legislature will likely address expanding statewide pre-k during the 2017 legislative session. (photo credit: Sonia Hooda / Flickr)
Legislative leaders outlined their priorities for the 2017 General Assembly Monday, and all agreed they want to expand the state’s pre-K scholarship program. The question that will face the full General Assembly is how much it will be expanded.
Republican and Democratic legislative leaders from both chambers agree state funded pre-K should be a priority in the upcoming legislative session. It’s an sentiment that began earlier this year when business leaders announced an initiative encouraging the legislature to expand the current pre-K pilot program, On My Way Pre-K.
That program exists in five counties and currently serves around 2,500 kids from low-income families. There’s estimates on how many seats are currently open if the state decides to offer more money in scholarships for these students, some saying 5,000.
Going from currently 2,500 students to almost tripling the program isn’t unreasonable according to House speaker Brian Bosma, but he says it just depends on financial forecasts.
“This may be a tighter session than normal,” Bosma says. “I think that will in part dictate how broadly we expand the program.”
Democrat leaders Tim Lanane, D-Anderson, and Scott Pelath, D-Michigan City, expressed interest in expanding the program statewide.
Indiana Gov. and vice president-elect Mike Pence, and those with ties to him, are likely to influence the next U.S. Department of Education. (Indiana Public Broadcasting)
President-elect Donald Trump is continuing to name his choices for top cabinet positions, with 60 days until he assumes the Oval Office. One role that’s still up in the air: Secretary of Education.
As it stands, Trump doesn’t have much of a record on education for us to look at. But Vice President-elect and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who now heads the transition, does. A lengthy one.
“I suspect that vice president-elect Pence is going to have enormous weigh over the transition process,” says Mike Casserly, executive director of Council of Great City Schools, which represents over 60 urban school systems. “The policies and positions and philosophies that he has espoused in Indiana are not unique to the Trump positions.”
So, what can Pence’s record tell us about where education could go under a Trump administration, a new education department and new person at its head? Let’s take a look. Continue Reading →
The uptick in these reports related to the presidential election caused Stand For Children Indiana executive director Justin Ohlemiller to write the letter earlier this week.
Ohlemiller also asked Pence to influence President-elect Donald Trump to speak out against “hateful speech or actions against any child”
“While there are differences between political parties, certainly we can all agree that racism, hatred, or bigotry of any kind has no place in our schools, and that school should be a place where every student, regardless of their background, feels safe and respected,” Ohlemiller wrote.
In the letter, Ohlemiller mentions an incident in Pence’s hometown of Columbus where students chanted “build that wall.”
This week the Noblesville Schools Superintendent Beth Niedermeyer wrote a letter to parents to say there is a “significant increase in student behavioral issues” related to the November election.
Niedermeyer said students were acting out because of the continuous stream of political rhetoric on social media and in the news.
“Election rhetoric being used in a way that is inappropriate and disrespectful to other students. Incidents have been handled on a case-by-case basis, but I wanted to make all parents aware of this concerning situation,” she wrote.
Trump has told supporters to stop harassing minorities. Trump and Pence have not yet offered a response to the Stand For Children letter.
The 2016 ISTEP+ scores show the number of students passing the ISTEP+ decreased for the second year in a row.
Fifty-two percent of students passed both the English Language Arts and Math sections of the test. This is compared to 53 percent in 2015.
Fewer students passed just the ELA test, 66 percent this year compared to 67 percent in 2015. Fifty-nine percent of students passed the math section of the test this year, a drop from 61 percent last year.
The Department of Education says the scores dropped these last two years because 2015 was the first year the state administered a new version of the ISTEP that matched new standards. It says students and schools continue to adjust.
The adjustments have not been smooth, and the General Assembly voted last year to get rid of this version of ISTEP and create a new test. The legislation that scrapped this ISTEP also created a panel of educators, parents and other stakeholders to plan for its replacement. That panel is expected to finalize its recommendations at its final meeting, Nov. 29.
A new test will bring a new adjustment period, so students may continue to score low on the state assessment, whatever form it takes.
The State Board of Education voted Nov. 16, 2016 to express support for legislation that would expand preschool for ‘high-needs children, following a blueprint set by the state’s current preschool pilot program. (Barnaby Wasson/Flickr)
INDIANAPOLIS — Preschool expansion will be a top priority for Indiana’s leading education policy body during the 2017 legislative session.
The Indiana State Board of Education joins a cadre of state business leaders, philanthropic organizations and Superintendent-elect Jennifer McCormick calling for a specific version of expanded preschool: one that focuses on “high-needs” children, using both public and private services.
“Let’s get to the kids that really do need this and make sure that we get them,” says Byron Ernest, a state board of education member.
Under a proposed version of expanded preschool in that style, families making up to twice the the federal poverty level, $48,600 for a family of four, would qualify. Other “high-needs” factors could include disability, homeless status, foster care status or incidence of child abuse or neglect. Families would be eligible for public services or pay for private services with state-funded vouchers.
The decision by the board, endorses a different type of expanded preschool than the version proposed by board chair and outgoing state superintendent Glenda Ritz.
Ritz abstained from the board’s vote, but says she’s happy preschool is a focus, at all.
Expanded preschool for “high needs” children has received support from notable Hoosiers, including outgoing Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett, the Indiana Chamber of Commerce and Governor-elect Eric Holcomb.
That group also calls for the elimination of the lottery for the pilot program. On My Way Pre-K is a small-scale pilot program for low-income 4-year-olds in five Indiana counties. Currently, the pilot serves fewer than 4 percent of the state’s roughly 40,000 4-year-olds.
In September, legislators pushed back on the idea of expanded preschool, saying preschool advocates shouldn’t expect tax payers to foot the bill for expansion.
The General Assembly will have the chance to address expanding preschool when the session begins in January.
The ISTEP panel will finalize its recommendation for re-writing the state assessment at a Nov. 29 meeting. (Photo Credit: James Martin/Flickr)
The state’s ISTEP panel concluded its meetings Tuesday with a broad set of recommendations. Chair Nicole Fama will compile what was said for a recommendation to the legislature. The panel will vote on that recommendation at its final meeting, Nov. 29.
The 2016 General Assembly voted to stop using the current ISTEP+ format at the end of this school year. It also created this panel of educators, lawmakers and state agency employees to draft a more desirable test. The legislation gave the panel a Dec. 1 deadline to make its recommendation.
So what ideas is Fama working with as she compiles the final recommendation?
Tuesday’s meeting was one of the first where the 23 members laid out specific ideas for overhauling the assessment. Superintendent Glenda Ritz recapped a plan she released a few weeks ago. A group of eight panel members submitted their own assessment plan, which they drafted outside of meetings. Other members submitted individual comments.
Discussion covered a full range of ideas including: whether the test should be given multiple times a year, to if it should be administered online, to different ideas about reading and writing assessments.
With so much variety, the only things everyone agreed on was they want a shorter test, quicker results, and no IREAD. Those sentiments were present the first day the panel met.
Most other meetings were filled with testing experts from around the country speaking to the panel on best practices – which many panel members say was necessary – but it didn’t allow much time for them to discuss the specifics of what they wanted to see in the plan.
But Nov. 15 was different.
“I think today’s discussion was one of the most meaningful we’ve had throughout the process,” says Callie Marksbary, an elementary school teacher in Lafayette. “As educators sitting in the room we felt like that was the sort of conversation we should have every time.”
Because it took this long to get to meaningful discussion, Indianapolis elementary school teacher Ayana Wilson-Coles says the short timeline prevented them from both getting adequate background knowledge and having meaningful discussions on what to present the legislature.
“So you have all this background knowledge on testing and then we only have one or two meetings where we’re really getting to the meat and talking about plans that people proposed,” Wilson-Coles says. “If that’s what you needed to do to make sure everyone was on the same page, that’s fine, but maybe the timeline should have been expanded so we don’t feel rushed to make a determination in our last meeting.”
One thing the group decided was to give the legislature a two-fold recommendation: one part would include broad ideas for writing a new assessment system, and the second part would have more details on how to achieve those ideas.
This suggestions came after Senate Education Committee Chair Dennis Kruse told the panel that legislators deal with hundreds of bills each session and they shouldn’t get “too in the weeds” with their recommendation.
When the panel convened, they group had not collectively decided which elements of all the proposed plans they wanted to include in the final recommendation. Instead, Fama will do that work outside of the meetings and is expected to bring it to the Nov. 29 meeting for the panel to approve.
Going forward, Steve Baker, principal at Bluffton High School, says he hopes the work of the panel serves as a first step and that the legislature turns to the members as resources.
“I don’t think our work should be done on Nov. 29,” Baker says. “Keep a part of this panel together for consultants and let’s keep going forward.”
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