RCSC elementary, middle school students perform well on ILEARN test

Originally published on Rensselaer Republican - July 24th, 2024

RENSSELAER - Results from the state ILEARN test for grades 3-8 have Rensselaer Central school officials praising their students and teachers this week.

ILEARN results were released to school corporations last Wednesday morning.

ILEARN is a standardized test that replaced the ISTEP test in 2019. It is designed to give state education officials an assessment of students in grades 3-8 in English and math. The assessments are taken by students in person on computers.

In English Language Arts or ELA, elementary and middle school students at Rensselaer had a pass rate of 48.5%, which is among the top 16 percentile in the state.

Carmel Clay schools and Brownsburg Community had the top rate of 69.6%. Locally, West Lafayette had a pass rate of 64.5%.

A total of 53.3% of Rensselaer's students passed the math portion of the test, which ranks among the top 50 in the state. Brownsburg and Carmel again led the pack at 73.5% and 70.9%, respectively. West Lafayette was fourth at 68.5%.

"I think this is the first time we were the top school among our area schools in both ELA and math for grades 3-8," RCSC superintendent Curtis Craig said.

Craig added to the corporation's principals: "Thank you and thanks to your staff for their hard work. These kinds of results don't happen by accident."

Statewide results show that 41% of Hoosier students were proficient in ELA, with 40.7% proficient in Math standards. Nearly 31% (30.8%) are proficient in both math and English.

RCSC students were well above those numbers.

Kankakee Valley had a 47.2% pass rate in ELA, Tri-County sits at 41.5% and North Newton had 39.7% of its third- through eighth-graders pass ELA. Twin Lakes was at 37.7%, North Judson 36.5%, South Newton at 34.0% and West Central at 29.2%. North White had just 19.1% of its students pass the ELA portion of the ILEARN test.

In math, KV had 45.2% of its students pass, with Tri-County earning a 45.1% rate. South Newton was at 39.1%, North Judson at 36.3%, Twin Lakes at 35.5% and North Newton at 34.7%.

West Central had a 33.8% rate and North White struggled to a 17.9% rate.

Unofficially, there are 50 students who have transferred out of or decided not to attend RCSC schools, instead enrolling in online or alternative schools.

The scores at schools that include students in the Rensselaer school district fall well short of RCSC's numbers, with the Indiana Connections Career Academy online school in Indianapolis showing 35.1% of its students passing ELA and 14.7% passing math.

Other schools include the Hoosier College and Career Academy, a tuition-free online school from Indianapolis (17.8% ELA, 4.8% math); the Indiana Agriculture and Technology, which has a charter school in Jasper County (13.3% ELA, 4.7% math); the Indiana Connections Academy, another tuition-free online school from Indianapolis (27.6% ELA, 16.8% math); and Union School Corporation, a public school with an online component (14.8% ELA, 5.4% math).

"I think it is clear, academic performance is not the reason for transfer," Craig said in his message to RCSC principals. "We know online education is not effective for most students.

"We need to be very thoughtful about why students are leaving RCSC and what we can do to keep them with us."

To learn more about Hoosier College and Career Academy please visit, https://hcca.k12.com/.

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