GiaQuinta: Low ILEARN test scores are a symptom of a larger problem

House Democratic Leader Phil GiaQuinta (D-Fort Wayne) and Senate Democratic Leader Tim Lanane (D-Anderson) released the following statement in response to the recently released ILEARN scores and the Republican supermajority’s requests to delay the impact of those scores.

“The bottom line is that Republicans have been running an education system in Indiana for over ten years that doesn’t adequately pay our teachers, underfunds our traditional public schools and is failing to test our kids correctly,” said GiaQuinta. “These test scores are a symptom of a larger problem. The Indiana House Democratic Caucus stands ready to work on education policies that set our schools, teachers and students up for success.”

“These low test scores, coupled with Republican outcries to legislatively nullify these scores, are a perfect representation of why the legislature shouldn’t meddle with school exams as frequently as it does. Additionally, this issue has shed light on a larger issue: the way we test our students greatly affects so many outcomes for our schools, from teacher pay raises to entire school funding,” Sen. Lanane said. “Of course I agree that these scores shouldn’t be used to adversely affect our teachers and schools. But this is a learning opportunity for lawmakers to understand how much pressure our teachers and students are facing to perform well on exams while wasting countless hours testing instead of investing in valuable learning moments.”