TERRE HAUTE – A western Indiana school district has suspended a teacher who may have leaked part of the state’s standardized test.

The Tribune-Star reported that the Clay Community School Board approved a half-day suspension with pay Thursday for a teacher accused of helping spread the high-stakes ISTEP-plus exam’s essay question. The teacher’s name wasn’t disclosed.

The suspension comes amid a statewide effort to discipline teachers who deliberately circulated what they believed was a politically-motivated test essay through e-mails and on Facebook.

That question asked Indiana eighth-graders to explain why they should be chosen for a type of voucher program Indiana Republicans are pushing that would use taxpayer money to help send children to private schools.

The leak prompted the state to scrap the question and the writing scores for 83,000 eighth-graders.