Republican legislative leaders are urging the state to use 2018 ISTEP scores for school letter grades and teacher evaluations this school year, instead of 2019 ILEARN scores.

The ISTEP test vendor flagged some unusual data from the Frankie W. McCullough Academy For Girls in Gary in 2017, prompting the Indiana Department of Education to take a closer look.

The state has released this year's ISTEP scores to schools and corporations after running into grading issues late last month.

The full impact of scoring issues plaguing this year's ISTEP results remains unknown, but state officials aim to resolve the problems by the end of this week.

Results from the 2017 ISTEP exam remain nearly unchanged after an overhaul of the standardized test caused pass rates to plummet two years ago.

ISTEP scores from Spring 2017 are scheduled to be released Wednesday. The standardized exam is used to calculate a school's state A-to-F accountability grade.

The State Board of Education released school A-F grades for the 2015-2016 school year.

Fifty-two percent of students passed both the English Language Arts and Math sections of the test. This is compared to 53 percent in 2015.