The company that runs Indiana’s standardized achievement test, ISTEP, will review whether the scores of as many as 10,000 students across the state are valid after the students were unexpectedly logged off while taking the online version of the exam late last month. Officials say no answers were lost, but some students were offline for more than an hour.
CTB McGraw Hill President Ellen Haley said the testing company would determine the cause of the problem and how to fix it.
This year’s test is a pilot project aimed at expanding online administration of ISTEP. Test data are becoming more important to schools, which already are judged under the federal No Child Left Behind law and given state ratings based on how students perform. A bill signed last week by Gov. Mitch Daniels requires student test-score growth to be a part of teacher evaluations.
