IREAD results for 2025 showed a remarkable jump in proficiency over last year, up almost five percentage points to 87.3% from 82.5% last year. It’s the single largest year-over-year increase in proficiency since the state implemented the assessment in 2013. We are finally back to matching pre-pandemic proficiency rates on something.

What’s more, progress was even more notable when looking at particular students groups. For instance, Black students gained 7.5 percentage points and English Language Learners gained seven percentage points over last year. (Relatedly, Chalkbeat put together this great deep dive looking at proficiency gains within IPS, Innovation Schools, and charters; their piece rightly emphasized notable progress at many of the city’s most chronically-underperforming schools.)

News coverage and the state itself have widely celebrated the results. And we should! It’s a meaningful breakthrough, especially considering largely stagnant results from 2023 to 2024. It also comes on the back of disappointing ILEARN scores for English. 

Meanwhile, it helps validate the enormous statewide investment in literacy support and the science of reading curriculum (to the point where it makes you wonder why we wasted years using any other method for teaching kids how to read). 

I’m not here to harsh the vibe. Not entirely, anyway. Because these results are good and I hope Indiana builds on them in future years. But there are three things swirling for me that I hope we don’t lose sight of.

1. The New Retention Law Kicks In (With a Vengeance?)

Just over 84,000 third-grade students took IREAD in spring 2025. Exactly 73,500 of them passed, leaving 10,500 or so students who did not. That’s 10,500 students eligible for retention. We won’t know exactly how many got held back until the state releases that date after October 1 (when student enrollment numbers for the year are locked in). Many of them may have qualified for exemptions. But that’s unknown. And I certainly don’t expect it to be the majority. 

2. Second Graders Now Take IREAD, With Illuminating Results

The state first allowed second-graders to opt-in to take IREAD with the 2022-23 school year. For the 2024-25 school year, they made it mandatory for all second-grade students. If a second-grader passes, they don’t have to take the test again in third grade. About 48% of second graders already passed this year, indicating they are ahead academically in their reading ability. An additional twenty percent tested as “on track to pass in third grade.” That leaves somewhere around 32% of our second-graders as not on track to pass IREAD in third grade. 

Now, this isn’t me calling for panic. There’s plenty of time to intervene and get those kids up to and beyond proficient on the basic skills they need to pass IREAD in third grade. But it’s a remarkable devil in the details.

Put another way, by second grade, nearly one third of Hoosier students are already behind when it comes to achieving basic literacy. Hopefully early literacy investments continue to pay off at both third and even earlier grade levels. But it’s astonishing to me just how many kids are already on a precarious path to literacy at such an early stage in their education journey.

3. There’s a Difference Between Learning to Read and Making Meaning of What You Read

If IREAD tests for a student’s ability to read, ILEARN tests for a student’s ability to make meaning of and comprehend what they read. That’s perhaps a bit reductive, but I think there’s a reason why nearly 90% of Hoosier third-graders can pass IREAD while only about 40% of kids can pass the English portion of ILEARN. That gap isn’t new. It hasn’t always been that wide, but it has always been present as long as these two tests have been deployed at the same time.

IREAD is measuring whether or not a student can leap over an early, fundamental hurdle. It is mastery of the very basics. Essential, but far from sufficient. ILEARN, especially as the years go by, is a much deeper reflection of a student’s ability to move beyond the mere mechanics of reading to the interpretation, analysis, and meaning-making that their academic career ultimately depends on.

It feels redundant in light of any modest educational success to say, “This is good, but we still have a long way to go,” seeing as that’s how pretty much every education leader responds to proficiency increases in the 21st century. But that pretty much sums it up again.

So let’s celebrate IREAD. And remember we have a long way to go. On IREAD, but even more critically, ILEARN too.