IDOE releases memo on ISTEP+ Security Breach

On Tuesday, March 1, the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) received notice from several
educators that an open-ended English/Language Arts essay question from the current 8th grade
ISTEP+ test had been posted verbatim on a public social networking site and circulated via email.
This incident was particularly troubling since it breached the security of the assessment while
students in grades 3 through 8 across Indiana were still taking the ISTEP+ exam. (The testing window was open until yesterday, Wednesday, March 9.)
Upon receiving notification from concerned teachers, the IDOE quickly worked to address this issue and immediately located and contacted the hosts of the webpage to ensure the question had been removed from the page permanently. In addition, the IDOE was able to identify the individuals believed to be responsible for providing a copy of the question to the webpage hosts. The IDOE is still investigating the details of the breach and will take swift and appropriate action.
The consequences of this very serious test security breach are far-reaching. As a result of this
breach, the Grade 8 essay prompt must be suppressed for more than 83,000 8th grade students who took the test. This means that although each of these students will still receive a statistically valid E/LA score, none of them will receive a Writing Applications score. The IDOE estimates that all reports, in both electronic and paper formats, could be delayed up to a week for all students in grades 3 through 8. The additional cost attributed to this serious security breach is yet to be determined, but initial estimates indicate the cost to Indiana taxpayers could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Some wild and untrue allegations regarding the ISTEP+ test question at the center of this security breach have been lodged. To demonstrate how incorrect those accusations are, we provide this detailed information about the very thorough and lengthy process by which ISTEP+ assessment questions are developed. The essay prompt that was posted online and circulated via email during this year’s test administration window was developed 23 months ago. The following chart outlines the development timeline for the Grade 8 essay question.

Please note the Superintendent of Public Instruction does not participate in any part of the process.

In recent days, some members of the Indiana General Assembly and representatives of other special interest groups have publicly attacked the IDOE and have insinuated a political motivation behind the essay prompt at the center of this security breach. These individuals have wrongly suggested the essay prompt attempted to persuade 8th graders to support a legislative agenda item.
A review of the timeline set forth above makes it abundantly clear that any suggestion as to a political motivation surrounding the test question is completely far-fetched. As described in the timeline, the IDOE conducted a complete review of the Grade 8 essay prompt (as is done for every test question) well before the November 2010 election and the beginning of the 2011 legislative session. This ridiculous notion is another sad, politically-driven attack on the Department. It has no merit whatsoever.
As mentioned, Indiana students have now completed the open-ended Applied Skills portion of the 2011 ISTEP+ test, and the IDOE is now free to share the text of the essay prompt at the center of this breach:
Your school has just announced a program that will allow a group of eighth graders from your class to attend high school anywhere in the United States. You will have all of your expenses paid for by a special scholarship program.
Write a persuasive essay to your school’s selection committee explaining why you should be chosen and where you would like to go to high school. In your persuasive essay, tell about the personal qualities you have that would make you a good choice.
Explain why you want to go to high school in the town or city you have chosen.
Finally, the IDOE is conducting a full investigation into this ISTEP+ security breach and will be diligent and vigilant in the search to uncover those few educators and/or other school officials responsible.
This breach may well constitute the biggest, most widespread breach of the ISTEP+ in the history of the assessment. The few individuals involved will be held accountable for negatively affecting students and their results on this important high-stakes assessment. The IDOE is working to determine the appropriate disciplinary action for the major misstep each individual made in violating the security of the Grade 8 ISTEP+ assessment and compromising student results. The IDOE will keep the public informed as the investigation concludes.
While those responsible for the breach will meet the appropriate consequence, the consequences for others are irreversible. Hoosier taxpayers will see hundreds of thousands of their hard-earned
dollars being spent to re-calibrate the scores on the test to account for the missing question. But
more importantly, each 8th grade student will miss out on a writing sub score, will wait additional time for ISTEP+ results, and will have lost an hour of summative testing time – 83,000 hours of important assessment time wasted. While the adults who read a political agenda into a test question were offended, the tangible impact of these thoughtless actions is on Indiana’s students.