ISTEP's Validity Questioned After Technical Glitches
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
Technical problems with the ISTEP+ test this week have local teachers concerned about the test’s validity. “I think what (teachers) are concerned with is how valid it will be,” Terry Sims, president of the Warsaw Community Educators Association and Madison Elementary teacher, said. “There’s been no crashes here that I know of, but we did not give out the test Monday. On Tuesday, (Warsaw Community Schools) was told ‘we think it will work’ (by the state). That’s not too reassuring. Madison opted out a day, so there’s been no issues here.” Sims continued, “We’re concerned we’ve had to keep changing our schedule. Teachers feel a stable environment is needed for a valid test. So we will be concerned with the results and how they reflect on us.” “As a teacher, obviously, our first concern is for the students,” said Terry Blauvelt, Wawasee Community Educators Association president. She said the test scores can’t be very valid because of the technical glitches. The problems also have increased students’ anxiety. ISTEP is a timed test, but students have experienced delays between questions. While teachers tell students not to share test questions with each other, Blauvelt said there’s no guarantee that they aren’t. “Kids need to know what’s coming. The test is very high stakes for everyone involved,” Sims stated. He later added, “Continuity is best for kids and this isn’t best for kids.” The test results also will affect schools’ grades from the state and teacher pay, Blauvelt indicated as another concern with the ISTEP problems. ISTEP was slated to begin Monday morning. Online testing was interrupted due to technological issues at the state level. CTB McGraw Hill Education, the organization that works with the Indiana Department of Education to release test content and test administration software, reported “red flag” status around 11 a.m. Monday. Testing was expected to resume Tuesday, but problems persisted and the state put a halt to testing. Schools reported minimal interruptions Wednesday, according to the Associated Press, but statewide testing continued at half the normal rate. The AP reported Thursday afternoon that Indiana Department of Education spokesman Daniel Altman said the agency hadn't received any reports of problems by schools administering ISTEP. Everything appeared to be running smoothly. The department asked schools for a second straight day to reduce the number of students taking the test by half to avoid problems. Altman told the AP that testing was to continue Friday. A press release sent out by the IDOE Thursday afternoon stated, “In order to minimize interruptions to students, the Department has again asked schools to reduce their daily testing load by approximately 50 percent. The Department has also extended the testing window by two days to May 17, 2013.” Schools reported minimal interruptions throughout the day and as of 4 p.m. Thursday, more than 345,000 testing sessions were completed statewide, the release indicated. In total, more than 1 million testing sessions have been completed this week, roughly 41 percent of the total expected sessions for the ISTEP+. On Thursday, Blauvelt said, Wawasee had to decrease testing by 50 percent. It caused a lot of scheduling problems and the “normal routine” of the school day was thrown off. As for the cause of the online testing interruption, a memorandum from the IDOE stated Tuesday morning that between 8 and 9 a.m. Monday, CTB’s monitoring showed an issue with the ISTEP+ online servers that caused them to stop accepting network traffic for a brief period of time. “The current investigation points to an issue with a memory configuration on the ISTEP+ servers at CTB that caused the application to start swapping pages to disc instead of using physical memory,” it stated. Last year when only the fifth- and sixth-grade students took the test online, the state had a high-stakes test to see how the system would perform, Sims said. Fifth- and sixth-graders all went to the computer labs for a dry run to see if it ran correctly. This year, though third- and fourth-grade students also were taking it online, the state didn’t do a dry run to test the system, Sims said, but he didn’t know why not. He recommended that in the future, the state renew the stress test on the system to make sure it works. Blauvelt said Wawasee released information to parents expressing the corporation’s and teachers’ concerns this week. The Indiana State Teachers Association also sent out a memo about its concerns with the testing problems and said it was looking into the issues. They don’t want the ISTEP problems to affect teachers. “The test window was extended three days. That’s good, but it doesn’t help the kids,” Sims stated. The students were expecting to take ISTEP on certain days, and when it got postponed, that affected the students. “I just hope the state will take into account that they hold us to a high standard so they need to hold themselves to a high standard,” he continued. ISTEP is tied to so many different things, Sims said, but “we don’t know how it will be interpreted.” Madison was lucky in that it waited to start testing, he said, so there weren’t too many problems at his school. However, they will keep testing until next Wednesday. “We also have other testing that needs to take place ... and they’re beginning to overlap,” Sims said. To fix the problem in the future, Blauvelt said, “Maybe they should go with someone who can handle the load.” Education is becoming more technology based, so schools don’t want to go back to pen and paper. However, if testing is going to be done online, she said the state needs to “go with a company that can provide what it says they can provide.” Sims agreed, saying, “It seems the company needs to be more vigilant. We have a year to take the test and get ready and this happens. It really destroys the stability of a testing atmosphere. ... I’m going to be real interested in what the results will be.”
