Local educators said they support Gov. Mike Pence’s recent order to shorten the amount of time students are scheduled to spend taking the ISTEP+ this year.

All of the changes and ongoing power struggle between the state’s leader and the Department of Education, however, have left many wondering what will happen next and if it will be in the best interest of Hoosier students.

On Monday, Pence ordered an outside review of the state’s standardized test and demanded State Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz cut the amount of time for testing in half.

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Testing is scheduled to begin as early as Feb. 25 and run through March 13. Another round of testing will take place at the end of April into May.

“I don’t disagree with the fact that the test needs to be shorter,” Cortland Elementary School Principal Diane Altemeyer said Tuesday. She also serves as the ISTEP+ testing coordinator for Seymour Community Schools.

“But there’s still so much in the air. We can’t begin to speculate what is going to happen,” she added. “As always, we’ll do the best we can do.”

The length of the test originally was doubled from around six hours to 12 hours to align it with new state academic standards adopted last year after Indiana became the first state to withdraw from the national Common Core standards. Pence previously supported the overhaul as an effort to strengthen testing.

Student test scores are used to calculate teacher pay raises, school funding and school grades under the state’s A-F accountability rating system.

Greg Walker, superintendent of Brownstown Central Community School Corp., said he feels educators need more direction from the state before administering the test.

“(Pence) says the test needs to be shortened, but we don’t really know what that means,” Walker said. “He hasn’t spelled out what we are to do and what we are going to cut out.”

Some school systems, including Brownstown, already have received their materials for the first part of the ISTEP+.

“We need an explanation of what is being changed and how that is going to affect the integrity of the test,” Walker said.

In a Statehouse news conference Monday, Pence explained the reasoning for his executive order.

“Doubling the length of the ISTEP+ test is unacceptable, and I won’t stand for it. Doubling the testing time for our kids is a hardship on them, it’s a hardship on families, it’s a hardship on our teachers,” he said.

He also hinted that removing the test’s reading section and a social studies portion “could substantially reduce the test’s length.”

Even before the directive was handed down, Walker said educators were concerned with the increased length of the test.

Since the test is new, Walker said the additional practice time was needed. But any more than 1 to 1½ hours of testing per day is too much, he added.

“Twelve hours is lengthy, and to get it all in, you’re looking at more than two hours a day of testing,” he said. “Shortening that is a good move, but we need clarification on how to shorten it.”

Walker also thinks it’s too late in the game to bring in an outside consultant to review the exam and make suggestions on how to improve it.

“We’re looking at five weeks at the most before testing,” he said. “That’s pushing it to have someone come in beforehand and look at the test, analyze it and come up with a good decision.”

Crothersville Elementary School Principal Chris Marshall said Pence’s directive is good news for students and teachers, especially in the third grade because the combination of ISTEP+, IREAD-3 and practice tests can cut into a normal class day for about a month’s time.

“My teachers and I are deeply concerned about all the classroom instruction time we are losing during this practice, ISTEP+ and IREAD-3 testing. There needs to be some common sense in all this,” he said.

Marshall said the students also are impacted by the length of time it takes for testing.

“These are 8- and 9-year-old children who become extremely anxious over all this high-stakes testing,” Marshall said.