IDOE Looking to Fix ISTEP Scoring Issues

Jennifer McCormick is Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Officials with the Indiana Department of Education are hoping to have issues regarding the scoring of the most recent ISTEP exams resolved by the end of the week. Our partners at WFYI report test vendor Pearson detailed concerns about the scoring of some answers to a 10th grade math question, which led to a delay in the release of test results.

The IDOE says some 22,000 students could be impacted by the scoring issue. Another issue, which is related to students in multiple grade levels is expected to only affect a small percentage of students, according to the department.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Jennifer McCormick told WFYI the IDOE plans to seek damages from Pearson.

"Obviously there will be damages that we’ll have to seek, but we don’t really know what that looks like until we know exactly what those damages are," McCormick said. "Our team in assessment works really really hard to get things right and we’re not perfect, but boy, we worked really hard to get that round correct and we’re also implementing ILEARN so it’s a very busy time for our assessment team."

The IDOE says students affected by the 10th grade math question could see a minor improvement in their scores, but others could see a lower or "undetermined" score. You can read more on the issue from WFYI by clicking here.