Published: September 21, 2009 05:22 pm      

Work ahead on the ISTEP

To hear Indiana’s top education official tell it, area school corporations have a lot of work to do to improve their students’ performance on ISTEP.

And maybe they do.

Tony Bennett, the state superintendent of public instruction, expressed disappointment last week that only about 70 percent of students statewide had passed the English and math portions of the test. He says the number should be closer to 90 percent.

Take Kokomo, for example. According to results released last week for the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress, third- and fourth-graders scored above the state average in math. Kokomo students fell below the state average in their passing rate in English and math in all other grade levels.

Bennett acknowledges that there are legitimate reasons some schools struggle more than others. Kokomo, for example, has a higher poverty rate than other schools in Howard County.

But Bennett says he’s tired of excuses.

“I’m very sympathetic to some of the circumstances that affect a child’s ability to learn,” he said, “but that cannot stop us from having high expectations.”

He has a point.

On the other hand, we agree with what Bennett said at an Indiana Education Roundtable meeting last month when he suggested that it was time to look less at overall performance and more at individual improvement. Schools then would be concentrating not on those students just on the edge of passing but on every student, from the student who passes the test easily to the one who might never pass it.

– Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, and Kokomo Tribune