INDIANA — The 2024 law that mandates retention for student who don’t pass the IREAD-3 is in effect, and around 3,000 third graders will need to repeat the grade. The law sought to address the growing number of students who were promoted to fourth grade without passing the test, which is an indicator of the early literacy skills tied to success in later grades. It has exemptions for certain students such as those with disabilities or those who are learning English, and gives students multiple chances to pass the test, including twice in the summer after third grade.
Statewide, over 84,000 students were tested, and 10,663 didn’t pass the IREAD by the end of third grade. Of those, 6,950 received a good cause exemption to go to fourth grade anyway, 3,040 were held back, and roughly 673 students either left the state or are now homeschooled, per the state.
The smaller-than-first-estimated retention numbers also follow an increase in IREAD scores last school year where 87.3% of students passed the test, an improvement of 5 percentage points from the previous year.
The state has multiple ways for a student who didn’t pass IREAD to qualify for a “good cause exemption” and be deemed that it’s in their best interest to go to fourth grade.
Those are if a student is in special education, if they are an English learner with less than two years of services, if they were previously held back in third grade or more than once before that, and if they are proficient or above in math on the ILEARN.
The state will continue to make sure educators have what they need to improve literacy rates overall by looking at schools’ reading plans and providing teacher training, literacy resources, testing checkpoints, and supports like tutoring and summer programs.