A bill to hold back third graders not passing IREAD exams was signed into law by Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb in March, leading to changes for local school districts.
The law requires that students in third grade be retained unless they fall into a narrow exception. It also requires school districts to test students in second grade.
Students can receive an exemption from being retained if they were already retained in the third grade once, if they are an English language learner who has been in the program for less than two years, if the student received a score of at least proficient in the statewide math assessment or if the student had been retained multiple times in previous grades and had already received intensive reading instruction. Such students would also be required to have remedial reading instruction.
Statewide IREAD results have trailed those of schools in Hancock county as the statewide failure rate rose over 20% in 2023, prompting the proposal of the bill.
Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation superintendent Harold Olin pushed back on the bill, saying that, while he understood where the General Assembly was coming from, retention was an ineffective method of helping students catch up.
“I understand why the members of the General Assembly wrote legislation stressing the importance of reading before this pivotal time in a student’s academic career,” Olin said. “That being said, I am not a proponent of mandatory retention. All of the research on retention that has been conducted in the past 20 years shows that it rarely has the desired impact.”
Olin also said that the fast implementation of the law has forced the district to reexamine some of the few students they previously retained in lower grades, who are now at risk of falling behind two years.
“The change in the law has required us to take a look at our current practice of retaining some struggling kindergarten and first grade students. We do not want to have our hand forced to retain a student a second time if they do not pass the IREAD3 assessment at the end of third grade.”
Mt. Vernon Community School Corporation superintendent Jack Parker says that, while the law doesn’t take decisions completely out of the hands of local districts, it does limit their options.
“While it is still a local decision, the law changed some of the flexibility for retention for students who do not pass IREAD and did not receive a Good Cause exemption,” Parker said.
2024 IREAD data will be released in August following the meeting of the state board of education.
