Roughly 3,000 Indiana third-graders held back due to reading proficiency law

INDIANAPOLIS — According to new data released Wednesday by the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE), roughly 3,000 students were held back this year after failing the state’s IREAD assessment.

“(It’s) a lot better than what we initially thought,” IDOE Secretary Katie Jenner said. “We’ll be watching those students very closely to make sure they are, indeed, reading by the end of third grade. That is the key point in time so that they can read to learn later on.”

“My belief on public education is that we need to stop focusing so much on the schools and more on the individual kids, and this program does do that,” State Rep. Ed DeLaney (D-Indianapolis) said.

It’s the first time third-graders were held back due to a recently enacted state law. Specifically, of the 84,000 students in the latest IREAD cohort, roughly 10,000 kids failed the assessment. However, 7,000 of those kids moved on to fourth grade thanks to good cause exemptions. The IDOE said, of the students who received a good cause exemption, 75% are special education students, 24% are learning English as a second language and 1% had either excelled in math or been previously retained.

“Retention is not going to be the answer for someone who’s been identified with having a special need or identified as having a language barrier,” ISTA Vice President Stacy Kurdelak said. “I was really pleased to see that the majority of our exemptions are in those categories.”

This comes months after the IDOE announced the biggest single-year increase in third-grade literacy rates the state has seen in IREAD’s history — officially bringing those rates back to pre-pandemic levels. During the latest State Board of Education (SBOE) meeting, the IDOE also highlighted how the Summer Learning Labs program helped 12,000 kids statewide improve their English and math skills over the summer. The IDOE said students enrolled saw their English/Language Arts proficiency improve overall by 25%. Secretary Jenner said additional funding is needed to keep the program running long-term.

“I think there’s an opportunity to really blend public and private dollars to make sure we’re serving as many communities in Indiana, as many kids in Indiana as possible,” Jenner said.

“Our going around with a tin cup in our hand saying we need money to do that which is our obligation strikes me as weak,” State Rep. DeLaney said.

The IDOE also said a proposed school accountability rule could help identify more kids struggling to read down the line. That proposal would give letter grades to schools. The next public hearing for that proposal is scheduled for Nov. 17.