Mirroring a statewide trend, the majority of the area’s public school districts saw continued improvement in their results from the Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determination assessment.
The test is given annually to measure foundational reading skills among the state’s third graders. The assessment was expanded to include second graders this year to give those students an opportunity to test early and avoid retaking it in the future.
If a student does not pass the IREAD as a third grader, they will have to be held back for a year.
In total, six Madison County school districts saw their scores increase compared to last year.
Across Indiana, 87.3% of third graders passed this year’s IREAD test, a 4.8% increase from last year.
South Madison Community Schools saw a 5.7% increase in its scores compared to last year. Superintendent Mark Hall said the district’s results directly point to a joint effort among administrators, faculty and students.
“The scores are actually the result of a lot of people’s hard work,” Hall said. “Our assistant superintendent, Laura Miller, oversees those programs. We have a literacy coach and we’ve done some professional development with our teachers. They’ve worked hard with that instruction, and of course, the students worked hard as well.”
Notably, the district’s East Elementary School had a 100% pass rate. Hall said a couple years ago, East Elementary had scored lower than the district’s other two elementary schools. Teachers there, he said, have been working hard with students to raise those scores.
Hall said staff members plan to continue the work they have been doing to help maintain their scores in the future.
Anderson Preparatory Academy’s pass rate fell 17.2% from last year, a decline officials there attributed in part to factors external to their school buildings.
“Attendance is a huge part of it,” said APA Superintendent Jill Barker. “If the kids aren’t there, we can’t help them. That has been something we’ve been looking at: How do we get better engagement with the families?
“We have about a 9% population that self-identified as homeless, so we are very responsive at helping them get the resources and trying to reach however we can,” Barker continued. “But obviously, we have to get better collectively with all the kiddos.”
Barker pointed to APA’s new partnership with Ivy Tech to help tutor students as one way improving scores is being addressed.
The school also has a partnership with Anderson University to bring AU student teachers to APA. The program allows student teachers to work one-on-one with the students.
Anderson Community Schools had an overall 10.5% increase in pass rate from last year’s IREAD scores, with Valley Grove Elementary School seeing a 22.9% increase.
Superintendent Joe Cronk said the district’s increase “reflects years of focused effort by teachers, staff, and community partners.”
“These efforts have been reinforced by after-school tutoring, summer school programs and partnerships with the Heart of Indiana United Way to bring in volunteer tutors to work with second graders,” Cronk said. “In addition, ACS collaborated with community organizations to expand tutoring and reading programs beyond the school day.
“Together, these sustained instructional practices and community partnerships have resulted in significant gains in literacy and the improved IREAD-3 outcomes.”
After ACS adopted the Science of Reading, ACS placed literacy specialists in each of the district’s seven elementary schools to provide literacy instruction to students in kindergarten through third grade.
Cronk said ACS plans to maintain that growth by focusing on its new Eastview Pre-K Center to get more students ready to read for kindergarten, replicating “successful strategies from higher-performing individual schools.”
This article appeared in The Herald Bulletin.