Glenda Ritz, superintendent of public instruction for Indiana, visited Wawasee High School Friday morning and spoke with several area principals and other administrators. (Photo by Tim Ashley)

Glenda Ritz, state superintendent of public education, made it quite clear she does not approve of “high stakes testing” in any way, particularly ISTEP+, and strongly believes such testing could be used more as a growth model assessment instead of only pass or fail.

Ritz visited Wawasee High School Friday by invitation from WHS Principal Don Harman.

Harman said the area study council made up of principals from several school corporations was having a meeting and he felt it was an appropriate time to invite Ritz, so he did so through the Indiana Department of Education website. She spoke to the administrators and answered a few questions in the auditorium for roughly an hour.

Ritz, elected in November to replace Tony Bennett, repeatedly emphasized she favors a growth model assessment because it gives teachers data they can use to teach more effectively. “You are getting two pieces of needed information,” she said. “You are getting their true performance level and also whether or not students are at or above their grade level.”

Speaking candidly, she said ISTEP+ is essentially a waste of money. “You talk to educators and they already know who will pass or fail the test before it is given,” she said. “It does not give us the data we need to help with instruction,” emphasizing the stakes are too high because it is a pass or fail test given to grades three through eight.

Ritz said reading and math will be points of emphasis statewide. “It’s important to know Indiana presently collects no reading data (separately) statewide,” she said (it is presently included with language arts testing). Literacy has always been a key focus of hers, she noted, and she hopes to have reading assessments implemented for all 12 grades by the spring of 2014.

In addition, she hopes to replace the I-READ 3 reading test for third-graders by next spring with a growth model that can be used for grades kindergarten through fifth. There will be a large statewide literacy focus beginning May 10, she added.

Special education “is near and dear to my heart” and those students need to be taught at the level they are at, not by grade level, she emphasized.

Math is even more important. “Math is even a larger concern than reading,” Ritz said. “Four-year colleges won’t accept students any longer if they need remediation in math. Two-year colleges are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on remediation. We have a 25 percent college graduation rate in this state and that is mostly due to math.
“The system in place is not working.”

Concerning common core standards, she has taken no position for or against because she wants to closely examine the standards first, particularly in math. But Indiana essentially adopted the national common core standards “with no public input from the people of Indiana.”

She also talked about high school graduation rates and hopes to open up a dialogue about what it should take to graduate. She cited an example of a student interested in journalism taking a journalism class and then not having it count toward graduation requirements. “All kids should have career and tech opportunities and have them count, all the way down to special education,” Ritz said.

The IDOE website will be redesigned and should be available in June, she noted. “We want to be a one-stop shop for your needs,” she said. Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter will be used more frequently, too, to reach parents with needed information.

School improvement standards is another point of emphasis and Ritz hopes to simplify the process for schools and let them use what works best locally. “I want to focus on what really happens at the classroom level,” she noted.

Ritz answered a few questions from administrators, including one from Dr. Tom Edington, Wawasee superintendent, who said Wawasee uses two tests, one of which is NWEA that is used as an assessment to help teachers, then ISTEP+. “I think ISTEP+ is done more for political reasons,” he said.

Ritz said she is trying to eliminate bureaucracy as much as possible and return local control more to schools.

Citing the letter grades of A, B, C, D or F assigned to public schools now, she believes public education is “too much about market-based education and not enough about true learning,” adding assigning letter grades can be used to justify bringing in more charter schools.

House Bill 1427 in Indiana is a very important one because it deals with education issues, she commented. She noted some $30 million was earmarked for rewarding teachers for not only how many students pass testing, but also for the growth rate of students. “We have good teachers in all of our schools and they need to be rewarded,” she said.

Ritz noted more than once she intends to make IDOE more “user friendly.” “A total focus of mine will be to relieve your burdens as much as we can,” she said.

She also spent time at the high school participating in conference phone calls with superintendents dealing with statewide ISTEP+ online testing failures. Ritz toured the high school before leaving Syracuse.

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Edington said he was impressed by Ritz keeping her promise to visit despite the difficult ISTEP+ issues. “I am happy to hear she wants to clean up areas that have not been addressed,” he said, noting several laws dealing with education have been passed in recent years and have sometimes left teachers and administrators confused about what they are supposed to do.

Concerning ISTEP+ Edington said “there is something to be said about accountability and letting the people who pay for our schools know we are doing a good job,” but a growth model can also show student growth and fits in better with the mission of schools to individualize instruction for students as much as possible. ISTEP+ focuses more on assigning a grade or performance level to schools, he added.

He also said he was impressed by Ritz’s ability to talk with people and listen to the concerns of teachers and administrators.

Harman had a favorable reaction to the visit, too. “I was very impressed with her focus and vision for our schools,” he said. “As we took a tour of WHS, she emphasized the need to allow students to have the flexibility to earn credits in many different courses and different means than we currently do. She also was very open as she talked to the teachers and students in the classrooms and areas we visited on the tour.”