Operation Education: Looking at the future of standardized testing in Indiana schools

Schools across our area have been scrambling to determine how to start the school year. The struggle-- balancing education while keeping students and staff safe from the coronavirus.

More schools are starting virtually, and that has educators questioning standardized testing.

The Indiana State Teachers Association doesn’t want to carry out testing this year. They say it will be a huge distraction and take a lot of time away from e-learning, which is already a challenge for many parents and teachers.

But teachers find problems with standardized tests every year, not just during a pandemic. Those ISTA leaders say this year could be an opportunity to take a step back and find ways to improve.

Shea Bailey has already been through plenty of standardized testing with her son, Ethen. She says his teacher started prep for the third grade iREAD test two years before.

"I said, ‘he’s in first grade, he’s got years to figure this out,'" said Shea Bailey, mother of two.

Bailey says her son was a nervous wreck during testing periods. She and many other parents feel the tests take up too much time.

"Do we need to give them a four-day-long eight hour test every [year]? No."

She has concerns about what testing and test prep means for subjects like art, science or history.

“It’s taking away from the other subjects that are just as important as knowing how to read and knowing math, basic math."

Keith Gambill, president of the Indiana State Teacher’s Association, expressed many of the same concerns. He said the tests can also be biased against minority students.

"The way the questions are written in a way that is tilted more toward a majority mindset," said Gambill.

He wants to get back to what standardized testing looked like 30 years ago.

“Initially when the ISTEP started in Indiana, it helped us look at how the student had progressed over the year."

Based on those test results, Gambill says the state offered funding for summer enrichment programs to help students who had fallen behind.

He says there’s been a shift away from that to more testing. Creating, administering and grading those tests costs money.

“We should shift some portion of that money back into the classroom, back into instruction and learning for students."

We reached out to state lawmakers to see if that’s possible.

Representative Bob Behning is the Chair of the House Education Committee. He says testing is critical.

“Especially since we lost three-and-a-half months this past school year, to at least help teachers know exactly where their students are," said State Rep. Bob Behning.

He’s hoping standardized tests like iLEARN can be issued in the spring. But he agrees with parents — it shouldn’t take days at a time, which is part of the reason lawmakers made the switch from ISTEP.

“We wanted something shorter, that returned more quickly and that had value to the users," said Behning.

Senator Jeff Raatz is the chair of the Education and Career Development Committee. He says there’s another way to reduce the time and money spent on testing.

“Probably the easiest way would be to change your standards, which conceivably could be dumbing them down, right?"

But Raatz worries then schools don’t have the tools to properly prepare students for their continuing education. And because of the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates testing in exchange for funding, Raatz says lawmakers' hands are tied.

“Until the U.S. Department of Education or Washington D.C. changes their stance, the states essentially don’t have a lot of say on it."

Behning says the new iLearn test never made it out of its pilot process. This past spring was only the first full cycle of the test — and it was interrupted.

Since iLearn was interrupted, Behning and Raatz say we need a few years to see if the improvements are really better. Both said the legislature tried to make improvements in length and usability of results.

Raatz says he and his colleagues got a lot of help from teachers around the state writing the questions, so they’re both still hopeful.