INDIANAPOLIS – The amount of classroom instruction time lost due to state testing has been a major issue for teacher unions and their members around the nation.

While education reformers and many Republicans have called for more accountability when it comes to student learning – which means measuring the degree of learning through more in-depth testing – the unions and their allies have loudly resisted.

In some states, union teachers have gone so far as to refuse to administer certain state tests. A high percentage of parents were supportive of those actions, because they want their children to spend their time learning instead of filling in answer sheets.

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That’s what makes the situation in Indiana so odd.

Within a few weeks, Indiana students in the third through eighth grades will soon be taking the state ISTEP exam, which will take a lot more time to complete than in the past.

The latest version of the test, designed and implemented by the Indiana Department of Education, will take up to 12 hours to complete, as opposed to five hours last year, according to the Indianapolis Star.

There has been a predictable public outcry over the longer test. Gov. Mike Pence, a Republican and political adversary of the state’s teacher unions, recently issued an executive order to shorten the test, and hired an outside consultant to identify ways to do that.

Meanwhile, State Superintendent Glenda Ritz, a Democrat who ran for the statewide office with the full support of the teacher unions, finds herself defending the longer test.

She has to, because her department created it. That must be an awkward position for a Democratic state official who ran on a union platform opposing in-depth state testing.

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Interestingly, many classroom teachers, who have been so passionate about decreasing the time spent on state tests, are expected to gather on the lawn of the state capitol today to protest on behalf of Ritz.

Teachers and their union leaders are accusing Pence and legislative Republicans of attacking Ritz for purely political reasons.

One has to wonder how those same teachers – who not long ago were so passionately against more state testing – would react if a Republican state superintendent had designed and created the absurdly long test.

Would they have followed the lead of some of their peers in other states and refused to administer the ISTEP? At the least they would have been outraged, and would have made their feelings very clear.

But instead of rallying against the test, they’re  rallying in support of its author.

A longer state test is a longer state test, regardless of whether a Republican or Democratic superintendent created it. If the teachers’ concern was really focused on students, and their need for more instruction time, they would remain consistent and back the governor in this showdown.

Which side is really playing politics in this situation?