WARSAW — Local ISTEP+ scores continue to drop this year. The scores were released on Thursday, Nov. 17.

This is the final year that Indiana will use ISTEP+ scoring. This change is occurring after a bill signed by Governor Mike Pence earlier this year that will end the use of this type of scoring by the summer of 2017.

This is the second year of more intensive testing for 3-8 graders due to new standards that went into affect last year.

According to the Indiana Department of Education, the average percent of grades 3-8 to pass both the English/Language Arts section and the math section is 51.6 percent in Indiana. All but two of the schools in the Warsaw School district had scores higher than the state average.

Scores continued to drop in almost every school in the Warsaw School district, with the exception of Edgewood Middle School.

Lakeview Middle School had only a 37.4 percent passing rate for both math and English/Language Arts scores, which were the lowest scores in the district. This percentage is 14.5 percent lower than last year’s scores.

Edgewood Middle School’s combined percentage passing rate rose from 56.10 percent last year to 60.8 percent this year.

Tenth graders at Warsaw Community High School had a 33.3 percent pass rate for both English/Language Arts and math tests. IDE did state scores for 10th-graders cannot compare to previous years because this is the first year 10th-graders have been introduced to more rigorous testing standards.