The scores are in for the state’s new standardized test, and the numbers are not what Bartholomew County’s top education officials expected to see this fall.
In Bartholomew County, just a little over half of the students in grades 3-8 across the county’s two public school districts and four private schools tested proficient on ILEARN, a replacement for the ISTEP+ test that, for years, garnered low results and took students several hours to complete.
The Indiana Department of Education released the statewide results for ILEARN Wednesday. About 500,000 Indiana students in grades 3-8 took the new test in the spring after lawmakers in the Indiana legislature mandated in 2017 that a new test be created and implemented to replace ISTEP+, according to the Indiana Department of Education.
Fewer than half of Indiana’s students passed ILEARN this year, and it’s caused some of the state’s top education officials to call for legislative action to prevent the scores from being used as a factor for teacher evaluations and schools’ letter grades for the 2018-19 school year.
Before the scores were released to the public last week, Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb warned the scores would be lower than the previous ISTEP exam.
Statewide, 47.9% of students were rated proficient on English and language arts and 47.8% on math. Passing rates on last year’s ISTEP exam for English and language arts were 64.6% and 58.9% on math.
For more on this story, including a school by school breakdown of scoring percentages, see Thursday’s Republic.
