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Like their peers nationwide, students at Crawford County Middle School in southern Indiana struggled academically in the pandemic’s wake. Principal Tarra Carothers knew her students needed help to get back on track.
So two years ago, she decided to double instructional time for math and English. Students now spend two periods per day in these critical subjects. Carothers believes the change has been a success, and a key trend backs her up: Crawford’s ILEARN scores in English language arts increased by over 8 percentage points from 2024 to 2025.
But overall, Indiana middle schools are heading in the opposite direction when it comes to English. In fact, despite gains in math, middle schoolers are struggling more than students in other grade levels in English, state test scores show. Since 2021, ILEARN English proficiency rates in seventh and eighth grades have fallen, with the dip particularly pronounced for seventh graders. And while their scores are up slightly compared with four years ago, sixth graders’ performance fell over the past year.
Indiana has made significant and much-publicized investments in early literacy, relying heavily on the science of reading, as many states have in the last few years. But that instructional transformation has come too late for current middle schoolers. Meanwhile, ILEARN English scores for third and fourth graders have risen by relatively small levels since the pandemic, although this improvement has been uneven.
The Board of Education expressed specific concerns about middle schoolers’ performance at a July 16 meeting. “We’ve gotta pick it up and make sure all of our middle school kids are reading, provide those additional supports,” said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.
Some middle school leaders say strategies they’ve used can turn things around. In addition to increasing instructional time for key subjects, they point to participation in a pilot that allows students to take ILEARN at several points over the school year, instead of just once in the spring. Educators say relying on these checkpoints can provide data-driven reflection and remediation for students that shows up in better test scores.
Middle school an ‘optimum time’ for students’ recovery
Katie Powell, director for middle level programs at the Association for Middle Level Education, said she often asks teachers if middle schoolers seem different since the pandemic and “heads nod,” she said. These post-pandemic middle schoolers are harder to motivate and engage, self-report more stress, and are less likely to take risks academically, Powell said.
When the pandemic hit, “they were young, at the age of school where they’re developing basic reading fluency and math fact fluency,” she said. Current eighth graders, for example, were in second grade when the pandemic shut down schools and many learned online for much of their third grade year. Third grade is when students are supposed to stop learning to read and start “reading to learn,” Powell said.
Powell noted that middle schoolers are in the stage of rapid development with the most changes for the brain and body outside of infancy.
“This is actually an optimum time to step in and step up for them,” she said. “It is not too late. But it’s critical that we pay attention to them now.”
Crawford County Middle School has nine periods every day, and students spend two periods each in both math and English. While many schools have some version of block scheduling, many have a model in which students only go to each class every other day. But at Crawford, students attend every class every day. Their version of block scheduling results in double the amount of instructional time in math and English.
To make this switch, sacrifices had to be made. Periods were shortened, resulting in less time for other subjects. Carothers worried that student scores in subjects like science and social studies would decrease. But the opposite occurred, she said. Sixth grade science scores increased, for example, even though students were spending less time in the science classroom, according to Carothers.
“If they have better math skills and better reading skills, then they’re gonna perform better in social studies and science,” she said.
Meanwhile, at Cannelton Jr. Sr. High School, on the state line with Kentucky, the first three periods of the day are 90 minutes, rather than the typical 45. Every student has English or math during these first three periods, allowing for double the normal class time.
Cannelton’s sixth through eighth grade English language arts ILEARN scores increased by nearly nine percentage points last year.
Schools use more data to track student performance
Cannelton Principal Brian Garrett believes his school’s reliance on data, and its new approach to getting it, is also part of their secret.
Students take benchmark assessments early, in the first two or three weeks of school, so that teachers can track their progress and find gaps in knowledge.
This year, the state is adopting that strategy for schools statewide. Rather than taking ILEARN once near the end of the year, students will take versions of the test three separate times, with a shortened final assessment in the spring. The state ran a pilot for ILEARN checkpoints last school year, with over 70% of Indiana schools taking part.
The Indiana Department of Education hopes checkpoints will make the data from the test more actionable and help families and teachers ensure a student is on track throughout the year.
Kim Davis, principal of Indian Creek Middle School in rural Trafalgar, said she believes ILEARN checkpoints, paired with reflection and targeted remediation efforts by teachers, “helped us inform instruction throughout the year instead of waiting until the end of the year to see did they actually master it according to the state test.”
The checkpoints identified what standards students were struggling with, allowing Indian Creek teachers to tailor their instruction. Students also benefitted from an added familiarity with the test; they could see how questions would be presented when it was time for the final assessment in the spring.
“It felt very pressure-free, but very informative for the teachers,” Davis said.
The type of data gathered matters too. In the past, Washington Township middle schools used an assessment called NWEA, taken multiple times throughout the year, to measure student learning, said Eastwood Middle School Principal James Tutin. While NWEA was a good metric for measuring growth, it didn’t align with Indiana state standards, so the scores didn’t necessarily match how a student would ultimately score on a test like ILEARN.
Last year, the district adopted ILEARN checkpoints instead, and used a service called Otis to collect weekly data.
It took approximately six minutes for students to answer a few questions during a class period with information that educators could then put into Otis. That data allowed teachers to target instruction during gaps between ILEARN checkpoints.
“Not only were they getting the practice through the checkpoints, but they were getting really targeted feedback at the daily and weekly level, to make sure that we’re not waiting until the checkpoint to know how our students are likely going to do,” Tutin said.
Both Davis and Tutin stressed that simply having students take the checkpoint ILEARN tests was not enough; it had to be paired with reflection and collaboration between teachers, pushing each other to ask the tough questions and evaluate their own teaching.
“We still have a fire in us to grow further, we’re not content with where we are,” Davis said. “But we’re headed in the right direction and that’s very exciting.”
Samantha Camire is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Samantha at scamire@chalkbeat.org.
