Brown County Schools is not acing ISTEP, but the district is OK with that. School officials say the work they do in the classroom can’t be measured on a standardized test.
“There were no surprises, no areas of concern,” Superintendent Laura Hammack said about the scores. “The scores didn’t resonate on either side of pendulum. We weren’t devastated and we weren’t elated. We received scores that were really expected.”
According to the Indiana Department of Education, 56.6 percent of Brown County students passed both the English language arts and math ISTEP tests, which students took last spring.
The state average for students passing both math and English in Grades 3 through 8 is 50.7 percent.
“Traditionally, this county, when we compare to state average, we are above state average. We continue to be above state average,” Hammack said.
Instead of focusing on preparing for ISTEP, the district has been focused on ensuring students are on a path to success after graduation.
“We just haven’t put a bunch of eggs in an ISTEP basket because we just don’t see that it translates as far as any sort of evidence of success,” Hammack said.
“The work we’ve been doing is collaborative. It’s problem solving, it’s thinking, and none of that translates into an assessment like the ISTEP test, she said.
“Really, when you don’t focus on passing a test, like we have not been, we don’t expect results that are anything different than what we’ve been getting.”
For most Brown County students, last spring was the last time they will have taken the ISTEP test. Students in Grades 3 through 8 will take a new assessment, ILEARN, at the end of this school year.
“It’s a very, very different test,” Hammack said.
This test will be taken in one session on computers only. It will still last for multiple days, but is shorter than the ISTEP, she said.
The biggest difference is that ILEARN is an “adaptive” test.
“It responds to the learner. When you take a question and if you get that question correct, your next question is going to be harder. Then if you get that question correct, the next question will be harder yet. It responds based on how well you perform,” Hammack said.
“If you took the question and you got it wrong, you’re going to get a question that’s either at the same level or easier. It responds to you.”
The idea behind the test being adaptive is that it can provide more individualized data on students, to help identify gaps in learning the Indiana academic standards.
“Then be able to really offer up information on what that learner needs as far as direct instruction. It is a different model for us,” Hammack said.
“We are needing to respond, and not just preparation for making sure our boys and girls have mastered the standards, but making sure our boys and girls understand how to interact with the technology.”
That’s one reason one-to-one technology has been implemented in kindergarten through 12th grades, with each student getting their own Chromebook.
“We need for them to know and be comfortable with that device, since that will be the device they use to take that assessment,” Hammack said.
“Just building stamina for your ability to type on a Chromebook is a really big deal. Our third-graders are going to have to be able to respond in text by typing a short answer response and we move all the way up to essays. So, building the capacity for our students to be able to just engage with the device is an altogether additional component to mastering the standards, because now we need to be able to interact with the device itself.”
In the past, students were allowed to use their own calculators on ISTEP, but ILEARN will require them to use calculators that are embedded in the computer-based test. “That needs to be taught. It’s not intuitive,” Hammack said.
ILEARN will test students in the third through eighth grades on English, math, science and social studies. The social studies test is optional; Hammack said a decision had not been made about whether Brown County students would take that test.
Sophomores will take the ISTEP again this spring as part of their graduation requirements. But as new graduation pathways get finalized, Hammack said she expects ISTEP will be removed and replaced with another kind of test, like end-of-course assessments.
The whole picture?
Brown County High School Principal Matt Stark is in favor of end-of-course assessments — exams given at the end of a semester that are based on the course a student took.
End-of-course assessments in Algebra 1 and English 10 were used previously as the graduation exam, but they were replaced by ISTEP for the 2019 and 2020 graduating classes, according to the Indiana Department of Education.
“We were having pass rates well over 95 percent in mathematics and into the mid-, high-80s in English language arts. ISTEP came in, and suddenly, all of those pass rates disappeared. Did we suddenly become a worse school?” Stark said.
Stark said schools should be held accountable for the job they do educating students, but he questions “high-stakes testing.”
“Do you want one test on one day to decide your job performance review? Where else does that happen?” he said.
Stark said having trend data from ISTEP is great, but he questions how it should be viewed.
“I was talking to an elementary parent the other day. Her daughter is really freaked that if she doesn’t pass the ISTEP in like third grade or fourth grade, she won’t go to college. … This is the rhetoric that gets assigned to this kind of thing,” he said.
According to scores released last week, 48.8 percent of Brown County High School students passed both the English and math ISTEP tests and 61.9 percent of students passed the science ISTEP.
Reasons why a student struggles on a test like ISTEP may run deeper than just understanding the material, including unstable home lives, or even events that happened during the students’ formative years of life that could have an impact on their education, Stark said.
“Not to make excuses for them, but these are the 9/11 kids that are going through. It happens to be a significant event everybody understands. That’s this group,” Stark said. “A couple of years later was the economic collapse. … They are fourth-graders.”
Brown County Schools has been recognizing that those factors exist and affect students’ school performance. The district was awarded grants in 2017 to develop lessons on empathy, emotion management and problem solving into the curriculum. Also, local mental health care provider Centerstone has been working in all buildings since the 2016-2017 school year to help support students and families who are struggling in some way.
“Does that sound like a school system that is just phoning it in?” Stark said.
He said any school accountability system also needs to be more inclusive of other accomplishments.
“We’re measuring two subject areas: Algebra and English. Those are the two areas we do. How many kids go to National History Day? … What are our kids doing in the science fair competitions? What are our kids doing in art? What are our kids doing in show choir?”
Using the data
ISTEP scores play one role in the school district’s “accountability grades,” along with other factors like graduation and attendance rates.
This year, the district will receive two accountability grades, at the federal and state levels.
The federal accountability grade comes from the Every Student Succeeds Act. Under ESSA, the graduation rate is determined by how many students earn the diploma that most students get. For Brown County Schools, that is the Core 40 diploma, but not all students earn that type.
Next year, the district will be able to count the “Indiana Diploma” for its federal accountability grade. That diploma was created during the last General Assembly session. Within that diploma are the Core 40, academic honors and technical honors tracks, meaning the district will be able to capture all students in its graduation rate for the federal “grade.”
Hammack expected those accountability grades to be released in the next couple of weeks, since it is a state rule that accountability grades have to be used in teacher evaluations.
Stark said school accountability grades can have an impact on students.
“If the school is an ‘A,’ everybody gets excited. If it’s a ‘C’ or ‘D,’ everybody gets nervous, and if it’s an ‘F,’ it’s, ‘Oh my gosh, our school is failing.’
“Think about what that impact is on kids. Is their school truly failing? They’re struggling in math and English, but is their school failing? They might be, and it needs to be taken a look at, but is that we want? Because it’s having an impact on students. It’s not just this thing that sits out there and nobody cares,” Stark said.
Along with the accountability grades, ISTEP scores also can be used to track growth, comparing the same group of students’ performance from year to year. The data allows for the district to see if there are downward or upward trends in areas like math that they need to respond to, Hammack said.
“Many times we use that kind of data if we are concerned about like a math textbook series. If we can find when a (book) adoption took place, and math scores consistently went down, well, maybe that was a bad tool we’re using as our substantive curriculum, and so we would make a different decision into the future,” she said.
She said the work the district is doing with hands-on learning in all grade levels, partnering with corporations for student projects like at the junior high school, and engaging students collaboratively is not measured on a standardized test — and that’s OK. ”You can’t do better than what’s happening in this kind of work,” she said.
“I stand still proud to say that we know the work we’re doing to prepare for students for life after graduation is the most important work that we could be doing.
“I would not be proud to stand and say that we were getting students prepared for ISTEP or ILEARN.”
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2017-2018 ISTEP+ pass rates
Brown County Schools total
English/language arts (ELA): 66.3 percent
Math: 66.7 percent
Both: 56.6 percent
Brown County High School (sophomores only)
ELA: 48.8
Math: 27.8
Both: 25.9
Brown County Junior High School
ELA: 64.4
Math: 63
Both: 54.2
Brown County Intermediate School
ELA: 66.5
Math: 72.1
Both: 58.7
Helmsburg Elementary School
ELA: 73.2
Math: 71.1
Both: 62.2
Sprunica Elementary School
ELA: 70
Math: 74.5
Both: 65.5
Van Buren Elementary School
ELA: 60.2
Math: 47
Both: 41
Statewide average (third through eighth grades)
ELA: 64.1
Math: 58.3
Both: 50.7
Statewide average (grade 10)
ELA: 58.9
Math: 36.2
Both: 33.7
2016-2017 ISTEP+ pass rates
Brown County High School
ELA: 59.4
Math: 20.5
Both: 19.6
Brown County Junior High School
ELA: 69.8
Math: 68.6
Both: 61.1
Brown County Intermediate School
ELA: 64.5
Math: 76.2
Both: 59.3
Helmsburg Elementary School
ELA: 72.4
Math: 71.1
Both: 64.5
Sprunica Elementary School
ELA: 67
Math: 64.2
Both: 58.5
Van Buren Elementary School
ELA: 65.8
Math: 54.8
Both: 53.4
Statewide average (third through eighth grades)
ELA: 65.2
Math: 58.5
Both: 51.4
Statewide average (grade 10)
ELA: 60.7
Math: 36.9
Both: 34.4
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