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Senate Republicans place high priority on helping Hoosier students improve their reading and math skills, which is why the General Assembly has increased tuition support by $2.4 billion over the last two budget cycles and placed renewed emphasis on proven literacy education methods.
Another initiative created Summer Learning Labs, a program with 37 sites across Indiana that helped students achieve major gains in reading and math this year.
Overall, students enrolled in the program achieved a 25 percentage point increase in English/language arts proficiency and a 24 percentage point increase in math proficiency.
These achievements follow other recent historic improvements for our Hoosier students:
Fourth graders’ reading scores improved from 19th to 6th in the country on the nation’s report card.
Eighth graders’ reading scores improved from 17th to 6th in the country on the nation’s report card.
Third graders achieved a nearly 5% increase in literacy rates on the 2024-2025 IREAD assessment, which is the largest increase in reading proficiency since launching the IREAD test in 2013. This amounts to an additional 6,000 students who are now proficient in foundational reading skills.
These improvements are not possible without our state’s great teachers, which is why I supported a new law this year that requires schools to spend more of their state funding on teacher pay and raises the minimum teacher salary to $45,000.
As your state senator, I will continue to work to find ways to ensure Hoosier children have all the tools necessary for bright futures, no matter where their career paths take them.
