Expanded ISTEP testing shows success
of archdiocesan schools through all grades

By Brandon A. Evans

This year, the archdiocese is receiving a lot more information about how Catholic schools are measuring up to state standards and the news is good.

Normally, ISTEP+ (Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus) scores, based on Indiana’s academic standards in language arts and mathematics, are reported for grades 3, 6, 8 and 10. But this year, for the first time, scores are also being reported for grades 4, 5, 7 and 9.

The federal No Child Left Behind law requires states to test students in grades 3 through 8. Indiana approved annual testing for grades 3 through 10 in 1999, but it has taken six years to fully implement it. Schools used to test only in grades 3, 6, 8 and 10.

“We doubled the number of students that were tested,” said Ronald Costello, associate executive director of Catholic education and school improvement and director of Project Exceed.

Between 57 percent and 65 percent of all students in Indiana taking ISTEP received a “pass” designation for both the math and language arts portions of the test.

For the archdiocese, that passing percentage is between 80 percent and 88 percent from grade to grade—a higher percentage than even other private schools in the state. And for individual portions of the test, some of the passing percentages are above 90 percent.

The scores are so good that they alter that averages for both the state and for private schools.

“We bring up those averages for the non-public schools about six percentage points at each grade level, and the state at one percent,” Costello said.

Also, statewide there is a downward trend in passing scores from lower to higher grades, but the opposite is true for the schools of the archdiocese.

“We’ve always said that the longer the students are with us, the better they do,” said Annette “Mickey” Lentz, executive director of Catholic education and faith formation for the archdiocese. “We’re very, very pleased with our results as an archdiocese.”

“I think we just really help our teachers focus on the standards, and our whole curriculum is based on the standards,” Lentz said.

She added that teachers in the archdiocesan schools are good at communicating with one another so everyone knows what the needs of the students are and what the students have already learned at each grade level.

Having ISTEP scores near the 90th percentile is the result of years of hard work, Lentz said.

Matthew Alley, a fourth-grade teacher at Holy Angels School in Indianapolis, said that all 13 students in his class passed both portions of the ISTEP test, which is far above the average for the Indianapolis center-city schools.

“This is a very rare class,” he said. “They’re self-motivated, and they want to learn every day. They can’t wait to learn new things.”

Part of the success of his students—and of Catholic students across the board—is the smaller class size that a private school allows.

Another part of his students’ success is a program called “Learning 24/7” that Alley was able to take advantage of thanks to funding through the archdiocesan Project Exceed program.

“It’s a program out of Texas,” he said. “They actually send representatives to each of the center-city schools” to help teachers set up an ISTEP preparation plan.

That plan—a four-week program—is what his students participated in at the start of the school year to help them learn how to take the test and do well on it.

The good test results all around the archdiocese are more than a pat on the back, though. They point out, Lentz said, what areas need more work.

The results give the archdiocese a clear vision of “where we are and where we need to go,” she said. “The more information we have from the data, the more we’ll be able to help students.”

“There’s always more work to be done, that’s for sure,” Lentz said. †