State School Superintendent Glenda Ritz lines out her 2016 agenda

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A  teacher shortage is one of the items that tops State School Superintendent Glenda Ritz’s legislative agenda for the year….

Ritz says a panel she appointed to study teacher recruitment will announce its recommendations later this week, but she says they’ll include a teacher mentoring program and more local control over teacher pay and evaluations.

House Republicans have made teacher recruitment one of their priorities too, proposing college scholarships for honor students who agree to teach for five years.

Also, it’s needless to say,  but ISTEP is another one of Ritz’s priorities this year

Ritz applauds the bipartisan agreement to give schools and teachers a one-year mulligan for falling ISTEP scores, but says Indiana “needs to move on” from the test.

Ritz says the state shouldn’t pull the plug on ISTEP until it’s studied what comes next.

Ritz wants a commission to talk through how to make the next version of the exam better. She says the test needs to supply teachers with more information about how to improve student performance instead of being a pure pass/fail exam.