Bill aimed to improve kids reading proficiency passes in the House Education Committee

Photo by DeMarion Newell, TheStatehouseFile.com.

The House Education Committee met Wednesday to discussSenate Bill 1 which took 2 hours but passed in a 9 to 4 vote. The bill would require schools to offer summer school courses for students who are not reading proficiently or are at risk of not reading proficiently indicated by an evaluation approved by the state board of education. The author of the bill, Sen. Linda Rogers, R-Granger,  said the goal is that “Every child learns to read.”

The bill passed out of the Senate with a roll of call of 36 yays and 13 nays.

The nays included four Republicans – Eric Bassler of Washington, Vaneta Becker of Evansville, Greg Walker of Columbus and James Tomes of Wadesville.

“One area we could improve on is the essential skill of reading based upon the data from IRead. Consistently every single year about 1 in 5 students in Indiana can’t read effectively by the end of third grade,” Rogers said. “This is not acceptable. If a child hasn’t learned basic reading skills by that point of school they’re going to struggle to learn almost every other subject.”

Several people appeared before the committee to voice their concerns and possible improvements.

Danielle Coulter with the Indiana Speech-Language-Hearing Association, voiced her concerns on the lack of evidence found that this will help students.

“We have not found much evidence saying that this helps students, in fact we see a lot of negative impacts on students settling within assessment results, ” Coulter said. “Instead these results should be used to monitor students over time, and not to be the sole point of order.”

Coulter continued, “We would like to see a couple expanders. So currently exempting those with intellectual disabilities, visible disabilities. children who have sleeping, swallowing, and sleeping, and sometimes it can take ESL (English as a second language) students five-to-seven years to develop true fluency.

Terry Spradlin, the executive director for the Indiana School Board Associationsuggested the bill start in two years.

“Because we’ve heard that not all teachers are getting trained in the science of reading. Shouldn’t we have that expectation first before we allow students to be trained in the sciences in the classroom because of the provisions of the bill, but as a last resort we must wait two years before implementation,” Spradlin said.

IRead is a standardized test that was developed to measure whether third grade students have the foundational reading skills to advance to the fourth grade.

“There were 14,000 students who did not pass in 2023 and as a state we retained 410,” Katie Jenner, Indiana Secretary of Education, said.

“Indiana has established a statewide goal of getting 95% of our third graders proficient at reading by 2027,” Rogers said. “SB 1 enacts a comprehensive policy to help our educators achieve that goal.”

Indiana’s third graders literacy rates have been dropping for a decade, even prior to the academic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, results remain 9.5 percentage points below the state’s highest ever proficiency rate 91.4% during the 2012-2013 school year, according to Indiana Department of Education.

Rogers, the bill’s author, says the first step will be for the department of education to inform parents of children in kindergarten of the program including the retention policy.

“Schools will start requiring the IRead test to be taken by the second graders. If the student in second grade passes the test they will not have to take it again in the third grade,” Rogers said. “If the student does not pass the test in second grade it will be offered in summer school and given remediation support for their entire third grade year before taking the test again.”

Rogers continued, “The student will need to pass the IRead in the spring of their third grade year or end of summer if necessary. If the student still isn’t able to demonstrate they can pass IRead which is written at a second grade level, then Indiana will have a retention policy preventing these students from passing to the fourth grade. The retention policy implements retaining students without an adverse impact along non academic dimensions.”

Rogers emphasized that the bill isn’t about holding students back.

“Retention is the absolute last option, if we tried all other methods,” Rogers said.

This bill had five amendments that were brought up and three of them passed. The two amendments that didn’t pass were 11, and 21. The three amendments that did pass were amendment 18, 22, and 20.

Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute, questions members of the House Education Committee during their meeting on Wednesday.

Photo by DeMarion Newell, TheStatehouseFile.com.

Amendment 11 offered by Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute, would make students who don’t attend at least 90% in a summer course must participate in a reading plan aligned with the science in reading for the upcoming school year. Failed in the majority vote of 4 yays to 9 nays.

Amendment 21 offered by Rep. Ed Delaney, D-Indianapolis, was focused around retention.

“Retention may be considered as a last resort, after other methods of remediation have been evaluated or used or both, if reading skills are below the standard,” according to the Indiana General Assembly. Failed in the majority vote of 5 yays to 8 nays.

Amendment 18 offered by Rep. Jake Teshka, R-South Bend, aims towards helping students who are not reading proficient in grade 2 and 3 with assessments and summer school instructions. Passed in the majority vote of 9 yays to 4 nays.

Amendment 20 and 22 passed due to consent. Meaning no vote was taken because the legislators agreed a vote was not necessary because they all supported the amendment.

Amendment 18 passed but still raised a concern: Would getting a teacher who was trained in the science of reading works?

While Jenner was speaking to the committee on why this bill is important. A lawmaker brought up Mississippi.

“Mississippi went from being ranked the worst state in 2013 for fourth grade reading to 21st in 2022,” according to Associated Press. Other countries have taken notice of the Mississippi leap and named this the “Mississippi miracle.”

Jenner implemented the Mississippi miracle into her reasoning on why Indiana should train teachers in the science of reading. “They jumped significantly in reading and it started with supporting and training teachers,” Jenner said.

The bill has now been referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, the tax-writing committee in the House of Representatives. All bills that will require revenue will originate in the House of Representatives.

DeMarion Newell is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.