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Indiana School Chief Calls Special Meeting On Student Testing

By John Dodge

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Amid growing fears among educators about the state's student assessment plans, Indiana's state education Supt. Glenda Ritz on Monday called for a special meeting of the state board to discuss the issue.

The meeting comes after a series of problems with administering the ISTEP, which is taken by third through eighth grade students, beginning in March. The test results help determine teacher performance and a local school district's ranking by the state.

In January, a trial-run to determine the reliability of the online portion of the test was a failure.

School administrators reported that the servers crashed within minutes, making test-taking impossible. A similar problem occurred in 2013.

The length of the tests have more then doubled from last year. Students will take the ISTEP for a total of 11 to 12 hours, with third-graders being testing the longest, a whopping 12 hours, 30 minutes.

On top of that, students will spend about three to four hours of class time taking the ISTEP practice test.

Testing Times

That stakes are huge, as the state will essentially determine teacher and school performance based on how well attention-challenged elementary and middle school students stand up to the marathon examinations.

The date and agenda for the special meeting has not yet been set, but it must take place within the next seven days.

According to a memo from Dr. Michelle Walker, the state's director of student assessment, another online "stress test" is scheduled for Thursday. Depending on those results, teachers may be given an option to switch to pencil and paper exams, which are scheduled to begin in March.

In addition, some of the software needed to run the tests wasn't even available last month, but was expected to be delivered in February, according to the memo.

The exams are requiring additional preparation for teachers, siphoning even more learning time.

Aside from the significantly lengthier tests, a "teacher script" to help third-graders prepare for the online portion is seven pages long.

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