Education issues in focus at the Statehouse this week
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Education will be in focus at the Statehouse this week as lawmakers and officials take up several major issues.
On Monday, a legislative committee is expected to hear more about the teacher shortage hitting Indiana schools. 24-Hour News 8 has covered the decline in teachers that has left many local schools scrambling to find qualified applicants.
The legislative committee will continue to work to come up with solution. The committee will hear suggestions from several education experts about what they think is causing the decline and teachers, and how lawmakers can address the issue during the next session.
Several teachers have told 24-Hour News 8 they think the decline comes from a lack of respect, low pay, increased responsibilities and extremely high-stakes testing.
Testing will be another issue at the Statehouse this week. The legislative committee will likely discuss the future of ISTEP on Monday, and the State Board of Education will meet on Wednesday to discuss the ISTEP exam.
Testing has been at the center of controversy over the past few years, and the tension continued after Gov. Mike Pence withdrew Indiana from the national Common Core standards last year. There has been debate over long testing hours and technical disruptions when students got knocked offline during the online version of the test. The committee is expected to discuss how to improve testing going forward. This past spring, some lawmakers even suggested getting rid of the ISTEP and using a new national test.
It’s still not clear how students faired on the new ISTEP exam last year. The state is far behind its typical schedule of releasing ISTEP scores. The results from 2014 were released in August of last year, but the 2015 scores are still not out.
This month a new controversy developed when a report suggested the paper and online tests differed in difficulty levels. The report showed one may have been harder than the other. Earlier this month the SBOE was set to vote on cut scores, or the minimum score needed to pass the ISTEP exam, but delayed the vote because of the questions surrounding the difficulty levels.
The SBOE could vote on the cut scores at its meeting Wednesday.