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Four of the seven area school districts achieved at least a 90% proficiency on the 2024-25 Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determination (IREAD) assessment taken by third-graders.
Wawasee Community School Corporation had 93.8% of its students taking the test show literacy proficiency.
Warsaw Community School Corporation had 86.7% of its students show literacy proficiency.
Tippecanoe Valley School Corporation had 95% of its students show proficiency.
Whitko Community School Corporation had 87.1% of its third-graders achieve proficiency.
Triton School Corporation had 88.4% of its students show literacy proficiency.
Manchester Community Schools had 90.8% of its students show literacy proficiency.
Wa-Nee Community Schools had 94.8% show literacy proficiency.
Statewide, results reveal that 73,500 of Indiana’s third-grade students – or 87.3% – demonstrated proficient reading skills on the IREAD assessment. This is an improvement of nearly five percentage points over results for the 2023-24 school year, which is by far the largest single-year increase since the launch of IREAD in 2013, according to a news release from the Indiana Department of Education.
The previous record for the largest year-over-year increase was set in 2024, and was less than 1%.
“Indiana has made extraordinary progress from where we began just a few years ago, when nearly one in five Indiana third-graders could not read, to today when literacy rates have increased by nearly five percentage points in just one year,” said Dr. Katie Jenner, Indiana secretary of education, in the release.
“Thanks to the hard work and collaboration of our educators, parents and families, students, and local communities – we have turned the page, with literacy rates now soaring at a historic pace. This is a time for celebration, and it is also a time to double-down on our commitment to helping even more students learn to read. The data is clear – what we are doing is working – so let’s keep at it, ensuring a brighter future for Hoosier students,” she stated.
From 2013, when IREAD began, to 2021, Indiana’s literacy rates declined every year, except one (a 0.2 percentage point increase from 2014 to 2015). The pandemic exacerbated this literacy crisis, and in response, Indiana has made historic investments aimed at helping more students learn to read, according to the release. With the nearly five percentage point jump in 2025, Indiana’s third-grade literacy rates are now back to pre-pandemic levels. The state has also set a goal that by 2027, 95% of third-grade students will be reading proficiently.
