President Obama announced his administration will work with states to reduce the amount of time students spend taking standardized tests.

State Department of Education projections provided Tuesday to a legislative panel show that the state's next ISTEP test is expected to take about nine hours. That would make it some three hours shorter than the test given to Indiana students earlier this year.

Indiana has not yet seen an end to this year's ISTEP+ testing saga or the state's controversial relationship with testing company CTB-McGraw Hill. CTB officials informed State Superintendent Glenda Ritz there is an issue with a batch of new technology-enhanced test questions included on the statewide ISTEP+ test for the first time this spring, which will lead to a delay in the release of those test scores.

Company officials said that the problem stems from new, technology enhanced questions that allow students to type in their answer to any given test item.

Standardized test scores for Indiana students will be delayed more than a month because the company hired to run the exam has hit a roadblock in grading a portion of the exam.