Indiana State Board of Education plans for ILEARN assessment redesign

Indiana students can expect to see changes to Indiana’s Learning Evaluation and Assessment Readiness Network, commonly referred to as ILEARN, over the next two years. The Indiana Department of Education has not taken any official action yet on the ILEARN redesign, but state officials kicked off discussions about the process at Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting.

ILEARN is a cumulative assessment given to Indiana students in grades three through eight, as well as those in high school biology. It is generally used to evaluate students’ mastery of subjects like language arts, social studies, math and science.

The redesign’s goal is to align the ILEARN assessment with new education standards and create multiple checkpoints to better measure students’ progress. The IDOE has conducted preliminary research to shorten the summative test and add checkpoints. It is also looking into creating testing widows to make the assessment more flexible for schools.

READ MORE: Indiana State Board of Education trims K-12 education standards by 33 percent

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Board member B.J. Watts said the redesigned ILEARN assessment will be different from other standardized tests because it will let teachers monitor their students’ progress in more useful ways.

“This will give us immediate stuff that we can go and kind of see where our holes are and fill those in before the students leave our classroom, so this is really, really exciting to me,” he said.

State law says the redesign must be complete by March 1, 2025. The IDOE plans for schools to opt-in to the redesigned assessment during the 2024-25 school year before rolling it out statewide during the 2025-26 school year.

The ILEARN exam replaced the state's previous assessment, ISTEP, in the 2018-19 school year.

Kirsten is the education reporter for Indiana Public Broadcsting. Contact her at kadair@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @kirsten_adair.

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