EVANSVILLE - Plenty of sleep and a nutritious breakfast are at the top of a to-do list for students in most area elementary and middle schools while teachers prepare them for spring ISTEP testing that begins Monday.
Students in grades 3-8 in public and many nonpublic schools will take the applied skills, open-ended, portion of the assessment from March 4-13. ISTEP's purpose is to measure student achievement in English/Language Arts and math. Students in grades 4 and 6 are also tested in science, while students in grades 5 and 7 are evaluated in social studies. The multiple choice section will be given in both a paper-and-pencil format and online from April 29 to May 10.
ISTEP (Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress Plus) reports student achievement levels according to the Indiana Academic Standards that were adopted in November 2000 by the Indiana State Board of Education. Jody Pfister, curriculum, grants and testing director for the Metropolitan School District of Mount Vernon, explained teachers collaborate to choose the best instructional strategies to achieve student learning using the standards, formative and summative assessments.
"ISTEP+ is not a test that a student can ‘cram' for," Pfister said, "but is rather a cumulative view of multiple years of learning, so all teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade build upon concepts."
In preparation, Pfister said teachers review test-taking skills for different types of questions and modes of responses and encourage students to pay close attention to bold, italicized and underlined words that may indicate importance in the directions of questions on the test.
"Introducing ISTEP+ type questioning strategies embedded in daily lessons prepares the students for the format of the ISTEP+ and using different types of responses ... such as bubbling in answers, practice using computer tools for online testing and planning strategies for written responses," she said.
Many schools in the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. held pep rallies for students in the days leading up to ISTEP that included motivational speakers, cheerleaders and some University of Evansville men's basketball players. It's vital parents remember not to schedule doctor appointments during testing, EVSC chief communications officer Marsha Jackson said, and to ensure the child knows this is an important test.
"In the grand scheme, everything teachers do in regard to core curriculum is helping students pass this test," she said. "ISTEP is summative, over everything a student has learned, but interim assessments such as Acuity and Dibbles help teachers find out what students are not doing well in, so that these areas can be retaught in a different way."
Individual progress is measured with ISTEP data that teachers can use to indicate areas of need in the classroom. On a larger scale, the scores also serve as a factor in determining a school and district grade, ranging from A-F, for the Indiana Department of Education accountability model, which takes into account the number of students that pass, as well as if scores are improving.
Pfister explained ISTEP data is also used as a percentage in figuring a teacher's evaluation rating based on new Indiana teacher evaluation legislation.
It's not really about the week of testing, but focusing more on the other 170 instructional days, a philosophy Superintendent Brad Schneider said is used in Warrick County School Corp. schools.
"We try to spend all the other weeks of the school year preparing our kids, teaching our kids the state standards and giving them the tools so when we do get to the week of testing they feel comfortable and confident that they can answer the questions presented," he said.
According to Schneider, school officials try to make the week as normal as possible and ask teachers to be cognizant not to plan a test or major project during ISTEP week.
"We don't want them to feel any additional stress or anxiety by creating the thoughts that ISTEP is the end-all to everything, because it's not," he said. "In my opinion, not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured. I still think there's a lot more to school than just test scores, but obviously we do understand their importance."
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