Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said she supports, at least in part, state lawmakers’ push to toughen retention policies for third-graders who aren’t proficient at reading. Photo from Getty Images.

By Casey Smith
Indiana Capital Chronicle

INDIANA — Indiana’s top education official on Tuesday said she wants Hoosier lawmakers to toughen the state’s third grade retention policies — while keeping some exemptions in place — as part of an “urgent” push to improve dismal literacy rates.

Secretary of Education Katie Jenner maintained that too many Indiana third-graders who lack foundational reading skills are advancing to the fourth grade.

Currently, thousands of Indiana third-graders who fail the statewide IREAD-3 exam can be held back, although there are numerous “good cause” exemptions, including for English learners and students with disabilities.

Still, it’s possible for a child who fails to pass IREAD-3 to “socially” move on to fourth grade, as long as they continue to receive third grade reading instruction during the subsequent school year.

Jenner said additional literacy supports are needed across the board but expressed specific concerns about the students who are moving up a grade without an exemption.

According to new data from the Indiana Department of Education, in 2023, 13,840 third-graders did not pass I-READ-3. Of those, 5,503 received an exemption and 8,337 did not. Of those without an exemption, 95% moved onto 3rd grade while only 412 were retained.

Republican legislative leaders said last month that the current state law isn’t being implemented effectively. Reforming Indiana’s third grade retention law now appears to be high-priority for both the House and Senate in the 2024 session. Although no bill drafts have been released yet, a mandatory statewide retention policy could be on the table.

But the proposal has so far been met with skepticism from Hoosier teachers, school officials and education experts who maintain that a more stringent statewide retention law could further inflate classroom sizes and have negative social and emotional effects for students. Critics additionally caution that holding back more kids will cost the state hundreds of millions dollars more in education expenses.

Jenner held that — although education officials are still gathering and analyzing retention data — “it has to be a ‘both and’ approach.” There’s not one “magic solution,” she said, but retention is a necessary part of the state’s “triage” response to widespread literacy deficiencies.

State releases more data

The latest testing data shows that only 81.9% of Hoosier third-graders passed the 2023 IREAD-3 exam, meaning one in five of students that age struggle to read. Jenner said those scores amount to “a crisis, a major problem” for Indiana.

Her goal is for 95% of Indiana’s third-graders to achieve passing scores on the IREAD-3 exam by 2027.

While third grade enrollment has declined since 2012, the number of students who do not pass IREAD-3 has more than doubled, according to data presented Tuesday by Indiana Department of Education officials.

Of the approximately 14,000 students who did not pass IREAD-3 in 2023, over 5,500 received a good cause exemption.

Across the board, students who do not achieve proficiency on IREAD-3 experience ongoing struggles with text complexity, engagement with research components, and writing skills, IDOE officials said during a third grade literacy presentation on Tuesday.

Data indicates that students who get exemptions demonstrate lower proficiency on subsequent standardized assessments. Additionally, students who pass IREAD-3 are 35% more likely to graduate than those who don’t.

Once a student gets an exemption, they don’t have to take the IREAD-3 test again. Education officials said that makes it harder to track a student’s long-term progress.

Jenner defended schools, saying local officials are “following what’s allowable in the state – they’re not breaking the current rules.”

But she said new policies are needed to help schools be more “proactive” and intervene earlier with supplemental literacy resources for struggling K-3 students. Jenner also called for policymakers to consider what can be done to aid students in upper grades who still struggle to read.

Why aren’t Hoosier kids at school?

The education secretary and other state officials further pointed to correlations with student attendance data released earlier this year, which indicated that about 40% of Hoosier students missed 10 or more school days last year, and nearly one in five were “chronically absent” for at least 18 days.

Rates of chronic absenteeism are particularly high for K-2 students, ranging from 21% in kindergarten to about 15% in grades 1 and 2, according to state data.

Jenner said she doesn’t have any firm policy recommendations yet but is confident that cracking down on chronic absenteeism will be paramount to upcoming policy discussions around literacy.

Possible solutions

It’s still not clear where new legislation targeting third grade literacy will land. Lawmakers reconvene at the Statehouse on Jan. 8 for the 2024 session. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb — who has said he’ll tackle the issue in his legislative agenda — is also expected to release his policy recommendations that day.

In the meantime, IDOE officials said they’re working on a new data visualization tool that shows granular literacy data — like IREAD-3 performance — that can be filtered by school corporations. The “heat map” tool is expected to go public in January.

The state is also pushing for more schools to administer IREAD-3 to second-graders to help parents and teachers determine if reading interventions are needed for younger students before they take the exam.

Officials also said they want to see Indiana’s colleges and universities better align educator preparation curriculum with science of reading instruction. Jenner said “most” higher education institutions across the state have been responsive, but she threatened probation for programs that aren’t properly training new teachers.

A combination of state dollars and private grants continue to be available to schools, teachers and parents, as well.

Part of the new statewide shift to mandatory science of reading instruction, for example, is being paid for from a $111 million fund aided by the Lilly Endowment. Another $60 million approved by the state legislature earlier this year funded ongoing science of reading and early literacy grants to schools and teachers.

Given that the 2024 non-budget session likely won’t see lawmakers reopen state coffers, Jenner acknowledged that any new legislative solutions will have to be “policy-only.” That could be complicated, though, given that some research suggests the state will have to spend millions of additional dollars to hold back more students.