ILEARN results for the 2024-25 school year just dropped. The top-line results for the state go something like this. In reading? Stagnation. In math? Modest growth. I’ll cover overall results and ultimately offer four takeaways for the education landscape in Indianapolis and statewide based on this year’s results. (Note that all data points below come from IDOE’s online repository.)

Statewide ILEARN Results for 2025

Here’s the statewide outcomes for combined student proficiency (meaning the percent of students who passed both the math and English Language Arts portions of the test):

• All students: 31.2%
• White students: 37.7%
• Black students: 12.8%
• Hispanic students: 18.2%
• Asian American: 45.4%

Those all represent marginal increases over last year (with the exception of Asian American students, who experienced a marginal decline in their overall passing rate). Combined ILEARN results have been ticking up (albeit very slowly) year over year since 2021 for pretty much all student groups. Nonetheless, five years on from the pandemic, outcomes across the board remain well below pre-pandemic levels of academic performance.

When you split outcomes by English and math, the picture becomes both rosier and darker. Rosier for math, darker for English. This year, 40.6% of students statewide passed the English portion of ILEARN. That’s a drop of around half a percentage point. Meanwhile, 42.1% of students statewide passed the math portion. That’s an increase of about 1.2 percentage points from the previous year.

4 Takeaways From 2025 ILEARN Results

Charter Schools Continue to Outperform Traditional Public Schools Locally

Taken as a collective, charter schools have a track record of outperforming IPS, other Marion County school districts, and even sometimes state averages on ILEARN, including when data is disaggregated by student group. That remains largely the case this year. Consider this snapshot for Black students in Table 1.

Table 1 – Black Student Proficiency on 2025 ILEARN 

	Statewide schools	Direct-run IPS schools	Independent charter schools
Black student combined passing rate	12.8%	6%	15.3%
Black student English passing rate	21.8%	11.2%	24.5%
Black student math passing rate	19%	10.5%	23.5%

First of all, because I feel obligated to say it, of course passing rates are too low in every circumstance. This is not meant as a blind celebration of marginal progress. Yet I do think it’s notable that, if you are a Black student in Indianapolis, you are more likely to be proficient on ILEARN if you attend a charter school than a traditional IPS school. If you consider all of Marion County (which is home to 11 school districts, including IPS), Black students attending an independent charter school outperformed their peers at 10 of 11 Marion County school districts. And these better academic outcomes remain true when you zoom out to look statewide. If you are a Black student in Indiana, you are most likely to be proficient in English, math, or both subjects if you attend an Indianapolis charter school.

Moreover, comparisons where charter schools come out on or near the top academically both locally and statewide largely hold true when considering performance for Latino students, low-income students, English Language Learner students, and students overall.

I also want to highlight one particular school: Girls in STEM Academy. I covered the saga behind them opening as a charter school within the boundaries of Washington Township last year in a series of pieces you can read about here (Part 1), here (Part 2), and here (Part 3). My feeling then, and now, is that they offer a valuable STEM option to Black and Latino girls in that part of Indianapolis. 

While their first year of operation is a small sample size (and their student body is still small), their academic outcomes affirm why they deserve to exist. They posted a combined passing rate of 50%, an English passing rate of 53.3%, and a math passing rate of 60%. Passing rates remained strong for individual student groups. For example, Black students (which form the majority of their enrollment) posted a 47.1% combined passing rate and a 58.8% passing rate in math. The vast majority of their students are also low-income. And they’re getting these results anyway.

Innovation Schools Lead the Way Within IPS

Within IPS itself, there’s a dichotomy worth calling out. Innovation Network Schools achieved proficiency gains in both English and math that outpaced traditional IPS schools and statewide averages for students overall and different subgroups, including Black, Latino, and low-income students. Consider Table 2.

Table 2 – Proficiency Point Gains from 2023-24 to 2024-25

	Statewide schools	Direct-run IPS schools	Innovation Network Schools
Overall combined passing rate increase	0.4 points	0.6 points	2.4 points
English passing rate increase	-0.5 points	-0.7 points	2.5 points
Math passing rate increase	1.3 points	1.5 points	3.7 points

Now, again, all modest gains. But in a year where schools around the state, including IPS as a whole, lost ground on English passing rates, Innovation Network Schools increased their passing rate by 2.5 points.

As I’ve said before, I’ll say again. The Innovation Network is incredibly important to the future of IPS. Based on the trajectory of recent years, it’s where their enrollment and proficiency gains are most likely to occur. This year was no different.

Statewide Literacy Investments Have Yet to Pan Out

Over $100 million. That’s how much Indiana has invested in literacy the past few years. Overhauling our reading curriculum to be based in the science of reading. Placing literacy coaches in schools. More rigorously evaluating teacher training programs. And even implementing a law that holds back third graders who don’t pass IREAD. 

Those investments are, in a way, all long-term. Their fullest fruits probably won’t be borne until years down the road. At the same time, I expected at least some initial results to prove those investments are paying off. 

Let’s be clear: there’s no world where the science of reading curriculum is worse than unscientific, unproven approaches. And yet, here we are. Over $100 million and almost no progress to show for it. In fact, we just slid backward slightly on the whole. Now, it’s worth pointing out that most of that investment targeted early literacy. The steepest proficiency declines on the English portion of ILEARN come from middle school grades and we did see marginal gains in lower grades.

But overall, this is not a rosy picture of investments paying off. Hopefully IREAD results come August will show it wasn’t all in vain. Until then, the state ought to be feeling some heat and figuring out what needs to happen next.

ILEARN Checkpoint Model? Impact Unclear

Last year, the state implemented a checkpoint model for ILEARN testing. This meant students would take the test multiple times throughout the school year leading up to the real deal in spring 2025. The idea being that schools could better gauge where students are academically and what interventions they might need to be prepared for ILEARN. 

Around 75% of schools across the state used the checkpoint model. It becomes mandatory for all schools next year. This might be another case of too soon to tell. But enough schools opted in that I’m hardly encouraged by our statewide results in light of the checkpoint model implementation. 

Still, this was year one. Time will tell if it makes a more substantial difference.