The damage done

The 2024 session of the Indiana General Assembly came to an end last week. How much harm did lawmakers do to public schools and their students? Not as much as they might have: It was a short session, after all. But they did enough.

The big education measure was Senate Bill 1, the “reading skills” bill. Its key feature is requiring third-graders to be retained if they don’t pass the IREAD-3 exam, with narrow exceptions for some special-education students, English learners and students who have been previously held back.

Everyone agrees that learning to read is essential; good for legislators for prioritizing it. But there are problems with their approach. Holding kids back in third grade is likely to improve their test scores in the short run, but the long-term academic effects are not clear, and retention has negative social, emotional and behavioral effects. Lawmakers brushed aside concerns about the cost to the state and schools.

Retention mandate would contradict ‘parent rights’

Republicans have worked hard to position themselves as the party of “parents’ rights” in education. When it comes to choosing a school, they say, parents know best. Sex education, mental health services, library books: they’re only OK if parents approve.

So it’s ironic that, on the vital question of whether a child should be promoted to the next grade, the Indiana GOP legislative supermajority would leave parents out of the decision.

Senate Bill 1, the top priority for Senate Republicans in the 2024 legislative session, would require students to repeat third grade if they don’t pass the state’s IREAD-3 reading test. It makes exceptions for some special-education students and English learners, students who have previously been retained, and students who pass a state math test.

More on reading and retention

Indiana legislators say they want more children to repeat third grade if they don’t pass the state’s IREAD-3 test. Data released last week suggest that would be a big change in elementary schools.

According to the Indiana Department of Education, nearly all third-graders who weren’t proficient on IREAD-3 in spring 2023 were promoted to fourth grade anyway. Many of those students had “good-cause exemptions” because they were in special education, were English learners or had previously been held back twice. But even among the 8,337 students without such exemptions, 95% were promoted.

It sounds like schools have been following current state law, which says students who don’t pass IREAD-3 should be retained “as a last resort.” The law seems likely to change, however. House and Senate leaders say improving reading scores is a top priority for the 2024 legislative session, and the tool they’ve identified is to make students repeat third grade.

Evidence is weak for making students repeat grade

Indiana legislators want to get tough on third-graders who struggle to read. As reported last week by Chalkbeat Indiana and the Indiana Capital Chronicle, House and Senate leaders plan to close loopholes that let students advance when they don’t pass IREAD-3, the state’s reading test.

“Passing them along is a terrible disservice to the student,” House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, said Tuesday on the legislature’s organization day. But there’s also evidence retention is a disservice.

Matt Barnum, an education reporter formerly at Chalkbeat and now with the Wall Street Journal, did a deep dive into the research on grade retention last summer.  “Despite decades of research,” he concludes, “there’s no clear answer on whether grade retention in early grades is a good idea.”

Making students repeat third grade does seem to improve standardized test scores in the short term. That only makes sense. Students who are held back have an extra year to improve their reading skills. They’re older and more mature than their classmates. But it’s unclear if the benefits last.

NAEP results win praise for Indiana teachers and students

Indiana had a pretty good bump in the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress scores that were released last week. Who gets the credit? It’s unanimous.

• Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz: “This is yet another sign of the hard work and dedication exhibited by our educators, administrators, parents, and most importantly, students.”
• Former state Superintendent Tony Bennett (via Twitter): “Indiana’s educators and students should be very proud of NAEP results. Your hard work is paying off!”
• House Education Committee chairman Robert Behning: The gain “validates that we have a lot of great teachers.”

If only they had stopped there. Bennett and others also pointed to the policy changes that he pushed in Indiana. “I think the policy framework we put in place afforded schools the opportunity to expect more of children, and I applaud the fact our children have answered that call,” he told Chalkbeat Indiana.

Most of those polices are just now being implemented, or they’re on too small a scale to have a noticeable impact on NAEP scores – with one exception: The requirement that third-graders pass a reading test, called IREAD-3, to be promoted to fourth grade. 

State board balks at reconsidering Indiana’s fail-the-test, flunk-the-grade rule

School Matters asked last week if the State Board of Education was ready to drop the rule that Indiana schools must retain third-graders for failing a reading test. We got a quick answer: Not yet. The board turned back a request Friday by Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz that it initiate the process of revising the state reading rule.

Ritz had just started explaining her proposal when board member Dan Elsener cut her off. “It looks like we’re changing horses too often here,” he said. Board member Tony Walker told Ritz she was wasting her time because no one would make a motion to reconsider the rule. (See Scott Elliott’s Indy Star story for more).

Ritz argued that starting the lengthy rule-making process would trigger a conservation in which the board could refine the rule and improve reading instruction – a topic about which the superintendent is passionate. But the board wasn’t hearing her. Instead it agreed to discuss the issue informally prior to its Aug. 7 meeting. Members could signal then if they’re ready to revisit the reading rule.

Oddly, the word “retention” wasn’t used in the somewhat tense exchange Friday between Ritz and the board. But grade-level retention is at the core of Indiana’s reading rule – and retention has been, for years, a contentious topic in education policy.

Research is mixed, at best, on whether forcing struggling students to repeat a grade is likely to help them catch up academically.

Will Indiana drop third-grade retention rule?

Arguably the most egregious policy pushed by former Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett was the requirement that third-graders be retained for failing a reading test. Now it looks like his successor, Glenda Ritz, is trying to get rid of that rule.

As of now, the posted agenda for Friday’s State Board of Education meeting includes a proposal to start revising the state rule governing reading instruction. The revision would strike the part that, with some exceptions, mandates retention of students who don’t pass the third-grade reading exam, called IREAD-3. Instead, the proposal says that, if a student doesn’t read at grade level by the end of grade 3, the school “shall, in consultation with the parents, determine if retention, as a last resort, should be implemented.”

The proposal also would drop a requirement that schools provide 90 minutes of uninterrupted, daily reading instruction. They would still have to provide at least 90 minutes of reading instruction a day, but it could be broken up. This seems to make sense. For a lot of young children, 90 minutes of uninterrupted anything can be tough medicine.

Daniel Altman, spokesman for the state Department of Education, said eliminating the third-grade retention requirement will align the reading rule with what state legislators intended when they passed a law, in 2010, calling on the Department of Education to create a plan for improving early reading instruction, including retention “as a last resort” and with “appropriate consultation with parents or guardians.”

“It’s important to have this conversation,” he said. “We want to have the best reading instruction in Indiana that we can possibly have.”

The State Board of Education in early 2012 adopted a rule that said kids who failed the third-grade test should be held back

State releases IREAD-3 results

Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett took a glass-is-84-percent-full approach when he released IREAD-3 test results today. And, yes, it’s a credit to Indiana teachers and students that 84 percent of the state’s third-graders passed the test.

But the fact remains that 12,000 children didn’t pass. And many of them will be retained in third grade, whether their parents and teachers think it’s the right thing to do or not.

Students who didn’t pass will get one more chance. Also, we don’t know how many will qualify for good-cause exemptions from being retained, because they are in special education, are English language learners, or have already been held back twice.

Bennett highlighted one charter school and three traditional public schools where 90 percent or more of third-graders passed IREAD-3 even though the schools have high percentages of poor or ELL students. That’s impressive.

But the fact remains that there’s a strong correlation between poverty and high rates of failure on standardized tests, including IREAD-3. Most of the school districts where more than 25 percent of students didn’t pass the test are those with high percentages of poor and minority students – including East Chicago, Indianapolis, Gary, Elkhart, Michigan City, South Bend and Marion.

National Public Radio’s StateImpact Indiana posted IREAD-3 results in a searchable database, along with a good quick report on the highlights. But one has to question the insistence by state officials that the good-cause exemptions are “broad enough that districts can determine which students truly need retention.” The exemptions are very specific and narrowly tailored – more so than those in Florida, which was Indiana’s model for the third-grade retention rule.

It’s also clear that test-based retention of third-graders isn’t what the Indiana General Assembly wanted when it passed legislation in 2010 calling for a plan to improve reading achievement. Yes, we should celebrate students who did well on IREAD-3 – and schools that pulled out the stops to help their students pass. But legislators, parents and educators should continue to question this policy.

Senator agrees: Indiana education board overreached with reading retention rule

Sen. Luke Kenley has affirmed that Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and the Indiana State Board of Education went beyond the bounds of state law when they adopted a rule that requires third-graders to pass a reading test or face grade-level retention.

“I would just put the Department of Education and the State Board on notice that they’re clearly not in line with the words in the statute so they’re opening themselves up perhaps to a lawsuit or a complaint by somebody on those grounds,” the Noblesville Republican tells NPR’s StateImpact Indiana.

Kenley’s words echo what Rep. Greg Porter, D-Indianapolis, told School Matters last month: that Bennett and the state board “essentially usurped” what lawmakers put in the 2010 legislation that called for ensuring children develop strong reading skills.

Both Kenley and Porter were members of the House-Senate conference committee that agreed to a compromise version of the bill, so if anyone knows what it was supposed to mean, they should. Kenley’s words could arguably carry even more weight because, like Bennett, he is a Republican, a member of the party that controls both the House and Senate.

And not just any Republican. He chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee as well as serving on the Education and Career Development Committee. By virtue of the latter appointment, he’s also part of the Select Commission on Education that the legislature created to review policies adopted by the state board and the Indiana Department of Education.

Lawmaker: Board of Education disregarded legislative intent with IREAD-3

Was the Indiana State Board of Education just complying with the wishes of the Legislature when it adopted a rule last year that says third-graders must be retained if they don’t pass a reading test? Not according to the author of the bill in question.

Rep. Greg Porter, D-Indianapolis, told School Matters that lawmakers clearly weren’t saying kids should be held back on the basis of their performance on a single test.

“The state superintendent and board of education essentially usurped what we said we wanted done as a legislature,” he said. “They went beyond the intent of the legislation.”

Porter was chairman of the House Education Committee in 2010, and in that role he was the lead sponsor of HEA 1367 – also known as Public Law 109 — which called for for improving reading skills for students in primary grades.

The legislation, Porter said, was a compromise that reflected strong reservations about the push by Gov. Mitch Daniels and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett to require students to pass a reading test in order to be promoted to fourth grade. It said retention should be used only as a last resort.

Porter said lawmakers were aware of research showing that students who are held back are much less likely to graduate from high school, and they also questioned implementing such high-stakes accountability when Indiana trailed other states in funding early-childhood education.