School districts surrounding Hamilton Southeastern (HSE) saw their ISTEP scores drop, and school corporations around Indiana saw a drop in test scores, just as HSE experienced in this latest round.

“We’re not an outlier,” according to Assistant Superintendent Jan Combs.  “We fared better than many.

The bottom line scores are all As and Bs, but there were concerns about certain subgroups of students, such as African-American and Hispanic students.  Board Member Howard Stevenson expressed concern about the large gap between white students and the small subgroups.

HSE Superintendent Allen Bourff told Stevenson his concerns are well-founded about the gap shown for some minority groups, but emphasized that HSE received high grades from the state because “we don’t have that many people pulling our averages down just because the numbers aren’t there.”

You can view the entire ISTEP report presented to the school board at this link.