What you need to know as Indiana gets ready to replace ISTEP

The future of Indiana’s hated ISTEP test could be decided in the next few months.

As lawmakers begin the 2017 legislative session, they are facing the deadline they set for themselves last spring when they passed a law aimed at eliminating the test and replacing it with something better.

The test could get a major overhaul. It could see some minor tweaks. Or the big decisions about the test could be postponed for another couple years.

That scenario seems far more likely now that Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, has said the state needs more time to develop a new test. In the meantime, he said Wednesday, the current ISTEP might have to stick around.

“It looks like we are going to have to keep the test we have now for another year or two,” Kruse said. “We want to do it right.”

Below, find some of our top stories over the past year on the ever-changing exam, where we explain how Indiana got to this point, the major players involved and what might come next:

Find all of Chalkbeat’s testing coverage here.