Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.Around 42% of Indiana students were proficient in English language arts and 43% were proficient in math in 2026, according to state testing data released Tuesday. While pass rates on the state test, the ILEARN, were similar to scores from past years, education officials cautioned against making comparisons, because there have been significant changes to state standards and to the test itself in recent years. The 2025-26 school year was the first in which all students took three ILEARN checkpoints throughout the year, followed by a shorter, end-of-year test.The change marks another chapter for the ILEARN, which replaced the ISTEP in 2019, and which was canceled in 2020 during the pandemic. From 2021 to 2025, Indiana students’ proficiency in English language arts on the ILEARN remained essentially flat, while math proficiency increased around five percentage points.Beginning this year, the new ILEARN scores — along with SAT and IREAD scores — will be a factor in the A-F grades that schools receive. Officials also presented IREAD and SAT scores at the Tuesday meeting of the State Board of Education.The ILEARN is administered in grades 3-8. The state counts proficiency rates as students who scored proficient or above proficient on the test.In 2026, just over half of Indiana third and fourth graders were proficient on the math section of the ILEARN. That rate declined in middle school grades, with around 34% of eighth graders passing the math section.Around 41% of third graders were proficient in English this year. That share remained consistent throughout grades 4-7, increasing slightly to 44% for eighth grade.“The difference is in math, that if you have cracks in your foundation early, the ripple effect that that has on all other skills is harder and harder to recover from,” said Ana Shults, the Indiana Department Of Education’s chief academic officer, about the difference in the subject score trends.A breakdown of the scores by student groups also revealed persistent gaps in proficiency. For example, just 29% of students who received subsidized meals — a federal measure of poverty — scored proficient in English, compared with 53% of students who didn’t. The state did not make school-level ILEARN data available on Tuesday, but officials did not say why. The state board approved new passing scores for the ILEARN at the meeting.Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said the test aligns well with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a test administered by the federal government.“We have a very tough assessment, tough standards,” Jenner said. Officials: ILEARN scores not only measure of knowledgeEducation officials framed both the ILEARN and the SAT as measures of a student’s progress toward college readiness. But that might not be the only measure of success for all students, they said.“We’ve talked to many employers, we’ve talked to the military. The SAT is not a score that they necessarily have interest in,” said Paul Ketcham, assistant secretary of education.Both tests will inform the state’s new A-F grades for schools, with elementary and middle school students assigned points for both growth and proficiency rates in ILEARN English/language arts and math.SAT proficiency is a standalone indicator worth 10% of a school’s grade, but more weight is given to the share of students earning the state’s new diploma seals. All Indiana juniors take the SAT, which serves as the state’s high school assessment to meet federal requirements. This year, 52% of students met the college-ready benchmark in reading and writing on the SAT, and 26% of students did so in math. Another 9% were approaching the benchmark in reading and writing, and 22% were approaching the benchmark in math.52% of students scored below the college-ready benchmark in math, and 39% scored below the benchmark in reading and writing. Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.
