INDIANAPOLIS – “It’s about less testing and more time to teach,” Indiana K-12 Superintendent Glenda Ritz boldly announced to the crowd Monday at a statehouse rally in Indianapolis.

That statement was not surprising from a political standpoint, because Ritz was addressing her most ardent supporters – mostly teachers and union officials who oppose state tests designed to measure student learning and hold educators accountable.

But Ritz’ words do not match her actions. She allowed the state’s ISTEP standardized test to be lengthened, so that it would have taken twice as long – from about 6 to 12 hours – for students to complete this year.

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And she was fully prepared to administer the longer test to students, starting in about two weeks, until Gov. Mike Pence and the public got the news and reacted with shock and anger.

At that point Ritz and her staff tried to shift the blame to Pence.

As a news report from Nwitimes.com put it: “(Ritz spokesman Daniel) Altman explained that the longer test is due to federal mandates associated with a 2014 decision by the Republican-controlled General Assembly, and signed by Pence, to replace the state’s adoption of Common Core state standards with Indiana-only education standards.”

Altman was quoted as saying, “If you have standards that are uncommonly high, you have an assessment that has to be aligned with them … that means the assessment is going to be more rigorous, which means it takes more time to take the test.”

What Altman did not mention is that Ritz enthusiastically supported the new “uncommonly high” standards when they were implemented in April 2014.

“I couldn’t be more pleased once again that we have strong standards in Indiana,” Ritz was quoted as saying by the Huffington Post last April, after the state Board of Education, which she chairs, formally instituted the new standards.

There is disagreement over whether members of the state Board of Education, most of whom are Pence appointees,were notified as early as last summer that the test would be a lot longer.

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But that argument is irrelevant.

Ritz and her staff are the officials in charge of developing the test. As the Nwitimes.com report explained, “Only the Indiana Department of Education, led by Glenda Ritz, the Democratic state superintendent of public instruction, has the authority to alter the test.”

And Ritz and her staff knew before anyone else – at least by January, as they acknowledge – that the vendor they hired to produce the test was preparing a much longer version.

They probably should have known long before that, if they had been monitoring the development of the test since last summer.

Yet they took no steps to address the problem until it became a public controversy.

The test is now going to be shortened by at least three hours, thanks to Pence. In recent weeks he hired two outside consultants to suggest ways to shorten the test, and Ritz has signed on to several of their recommendations..

The same corrections could have been made before now, if Ritz had been concerned enough to act on her own, well before the governor or the public knew about the problem.

All of this speaks to Ritz’ competence and leadership abilities, or lack thereof.

A bill in the state Assembly, which is supported by Pence, would allow the state Board of Education to choose its own chairperson. Under current law the publicly-elected state superintendent is the automatic chairman.

There is another movement that would allow the governor to appoint the state superintendent, rather than having the office filled through a statewide election.

Ritz and her Democratic supporters are aghast at those ideas. They argue that she was elected by the people, and should be allowed to set education policy in Indiana with limited interference from the executive or legislative branches.

“I am an educator, and I know what we need our schools,” Ritz said at the statehouse rally on Monday.

Well, there seems to be widespread consensus that the state needs a much shorter ISTEP test. Yet Ritz did nothing to address that issue until the governor and the public forced her hand, and by that time it was almost too late.

That doesn’t seem to support the argument that Ritz is the right person to determine policies that are in the best interests of the students of Indiana.