Indiana Department of Education made a multi-million dollar contract with a testing company in an effort to digitize ISTEP+ testing, with less than commendable results. ISTEP+ is a statewide mandatory test, given to children in grades three to eight.

According to the IDOE website, the testing has several purposes. “The purpose of the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress Plus program is to measure student achievement in the subject areas of English/Language Arts, mathematics, science (grades 4 and 6), and social studies (grades 5 and 7). In particular, ISTEP+ reports student achievement levels according to the Indiana Academic Standards that were adopted by the Indiana State Board of Education.”

Indiana has already been in a bit of a heated battle on the topic of whether standardized testing for each student is the most beneficial option. Now, opponents of standardized testing have one more reason to question the methods. Local school corporations issued a “stress test” Jan. 13 in order to weigh the benefits of digital testing. CTB, a division of McGraw Hill Education, led the efforts statewide. Brad Hagg, chief technology officer at Warsaw Community Schools, helped administer the testing locally.

“The goal of the readiness or stress test was to determine the level of readiness for schools for ISTEP+ testing in the spring, and to test the technology delivery systems that will be used to conduct the test by CTB,” said Hagg. According to Hagg, the test is administered by “loading software on every computer that will be used for testing… .” At the Warsaw Community Schools, that meant more than 1,830 computers had to have new software installed, keeping his department busy.

In emails, Brad Hagg was tangibly distressed by the outcome. “It was a complete, statewide failure,” Hagg wrote. “All of our students began logging into the test at 10 a.m. By 10:08, almost every testing computer in the state had completely frozen.” Hagg stated in addition to frozen screens, tests were skipping questions or jumping ahead, or giving the student a question with the correct answer pre-selected for the student.

After a frustrating morning, IDOE released a memo noting the software loaded onto all these computers was actually just a prototype of the real deal, meaning when the actual ISTEP+ testing takes place, tech guys like Hagg will need to install a completely new round of software. Hagg said the next step will be to install the new software, and take another stress test within a month.

“Obviously we are deeply concerned that student instructional time was wasted to test a client that was not actually going to be used for testing,” said Hagg, “… this represents a tremendous number of wasted labor hours that must be used to duplicate this process,” when corporations are forced to re-install new software. Syracuse Elementary School Principal Eric Speicher had similar feelings.

“If the State of Indiana cannot ensure uninterrupted ISTEP+ testing for students, then they should allow every school the option of taking the test with paper and pencil,” said Speicher. According to Speicher, the company also recommended pausing the testing, and resuming again at a 1 p.m. session. “The first trial run was such a mess, we decided not to participate at 1 p.m. We felt like the instructional day had been disrupted too much already.”

“The next step will be to install the new client and verify that everything on our end is ready to go,” said Hagg. Hagg reported there is currently a selection process in the works for a vendor for the ISTEP+ testing future.