Jasper School Board Meeting: Monday, February 25, 2015
Despite efforts by the state legislation to simplify the ISTEP, the situation isn’t getting better.
According to Greater Jasper School Corporation’s curriculum director Kim Strobel and superintendent Dr. Tracy Lorey, it is getting more complicated.
During Monday’s regular school board meeting Strobel presented information about the proposed plan to reduce the time to take the tests. To do so, students will be given only one of the two tests in efforts to increase the accuracy once results are tabulated.
Dr. Lorey said, “although we’re glad that they are going to shorten the test, it leaves a lot of concern about the validity of the test. What do those scores mean for the students and what do those scores mean in accountability for teachers, schools and district?”
She also said that ISTEP test results will likely be delayed due to ‘cut scores’ and ‘passing cut scores’ not being established yet. Cut scores are selected points on the score scale of a test. The points are used to determine whether a particular test score is sufficient for some purpose.
Dr. Lorey also presented the new bus route contracts. She said that there are 28 routes; 22 of them going to contractors and the rest remaining with the school corporation. She reported that the routes are different for this fall because of the new software purchased by the school corporation. The software has helped improve route efficiency and reduced route overlapping. The buses will pick up students in all classes instead of having one bus for high school students and another for elementary students.
She reported to the board that the annual bus contract amount will increase by about $150,000.00 next year. The contract has been nearly $1 million annually.
Lorey also gave an update on infrastructure improvements needed at the middle and high school facilities to accommodate giving each student a technology device, which would be used in the learning process. No action was taken on the plans that will include hardware improvements. Lorey will present the plan in the March meeting.
Finally, Lorey told the board last week’s three snow days will be made up on March 20, March 30 and April 6th. She reported that there are no more make-up days in the calendar and that additional snow days would have to be made up at the end of the school year.
