Indiana is preparing to add a new federal layer to its already expansive school choice system, with a tax credit program that could steer millions of privately donated dollars toward tuition, tutoring, transportation, and other education expenses beginning in 2027 – including for students in public schools.

The “Education Freedom Tax Credit Scholarship” (EFTC), created by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act enacted in 2025, takes effect January 1, 2027. Individual taxpayers can receive a dollar-for-dollar federal income tax credit of up to $1,700 for qualified cash contributions to a Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO), and the U.S. Department of Treasury’s newly proposed regulations allow married couples filing jointly to claim as much as $3,400 if each spouse makes qualifying contributions.

The credit is nonrefundable, although unused amounts can be carried forward for up to five years.

Indiana opted into the federal program earlier this year with five initial SGOs within the state. The federal credit is more than just another way to subsidize private school tuition, as the larger impact is derived from the breadth of students and expenses that can participate, compared to Indiana’s existing school choice programs.

The Institute for Quality Education, the state’s first and largest SGO, stands ready to serve as the primary organization dispersing these scholarships. Betsy Wiley, president and CEO of IQE, expects the organization to serve as an Indiana-only SGO under the federal program, building on its experience administering the state’s existing Tax Credit Scholarship Program.

“As the SGO, you’re basically just literally the administrator of the program. You’re out soliciting the donations and working with the donors to make sure they get their tax credit, and then you’re awarding scholarships to qualified individuals on the other side,” Wiley explains.

Five Indiana-based SGOs are on the state’s initial list of participants: IQE, the Sagamore Institute, Lutheran Scholarship Granting Organization in Fort Wayne, School Scholarship Granting Organization of Northeast Indiana, and the Legacy Foundation in Lake County. The latter four primarily work with private and religious schools in the state.

IQE, in its role as an SGO, will have substantial responsibility over how the program develops in Indiana. The organization must attract taxpayers willing to contribute, verify student eligibility, determine scholarship awards and permissible expenses, work with schools and education providers, and meet federal spending and reporting requirements, all for a program whose size ultimately depends on how much money donors choose to put into it.

Indiana is already familiar with scholarship granting organizations, primarily for private schools, but the federal version reaches farther than the state program in several ways.

Indiana’s Tax Credit Scholarship provides donors a 50% state tax credit and supports eligible students attending participating private schools, with scholarship dollars generally directed toward tuition and fees. The new federal program carries a 100% tax credit up to the federal limit and may be used alongside Indiana’s Choice Scholarship, Education Scholarship Account (ESA), Career Scholarship Account (CSA), and state Tax Credit Scholarship when the requirements of each program are met.

Wiley views the inclusion of students outside private schools as one of the federal program’s biggest differences, and benefit, for Indiana.

“One of the most exciting things about the EFTC program is that it is available specifically … Congress was very clear about public school students, and therefore charter school students, as well as nonpublic school students, and in Indiana homeschool students can participate in the program,” Wiley tells your favorite education newsletter.

She points out “that’s very different from our existing state tax credit program that is only for private school tuition and fees.”

IQE estimates the income ceiling – 300% of area median income – puts roughly 90% of Indiana students within the program’s potential reach. The U.S. Treasury and the U.S. Department of Education estimate about 95% of children nationally live in households that satisfy the income limitation, although eligibility does not guarantee that a student receives money because awards depend on donations, available SGO funds, and the organization’s decisions.

The proposed federal rules state students are eligible if they can enroll in a public elementary or secondary school and their household’s prior-year income falls at or below 300% of the area median gross income, adjusted for family size.

The mechanics are more complicated than simply giving $1,700 to a family and receiving $1,700 back at tax time.
Federal law prohibits a taxpayer from earmarking a contribution for a particular student. The donor instead contributes to an approved SGO, which controls the scholarship process. Federal rules require SGOs to keep qualified contributions separately, spend at least 90% on scholarships, and provide awards to at least 10 students who do not all attend the same school.

IQE plans to allow donors to identify a school or an expense category they want their contribution to support. Examples of categories include tuition, tutoring, before- and after-school care, or the area of greatest student need, and Wiley describes a system in which those preferences are tracked without allowing money to follow a named child.

“A donor could say, ‘I want it to go to support students that are doing high dosage tutoring,’ or ‘I want it to go support students that go to a particular school corporation,’ and then we’ll put that in a segregated account and make sure that their intentions are met as the administrator of the program,” Wiley explains.

Those preferences are not absolute. Wiley notes that federal spending requirements mean IQE may have to redirect money if a donor’s chosen category cannot absorb it quickly enough. Under the guidelines, 90% of money raised in 2027 must be distributed in scholarships by the end of 2028.

“If we have to make adjustments from a donor’s wishes in order to get the money out and stay in compliance, we’ll do that,” Wiley adds, although she called that possibility “highly unlikely.”

Such an arrangement could make schools important fundraisers for the federal program, even though they are not receiving a conventional federal appropriation. A school that persuades parents, alumni, grandparents, or other supporters to contribute through an SGO and designate that school could create a pool of scholarship money benefiting eligible students there, opening a new source of support for both private schools accustomed to scholarship fundraising and traditional public districts that generally have not worked within an SGO structure.

The public school component may become one of the more consequential pieces of the Indiana rollout.

Tutoring, transportation, instructional materials and technology, before- and after-school programs, and services for students with disabilities are among potential scholarship expenses . . . particularly for traditional public schools or charter schools, which don’t charge families tuition. Work-based learning could also become a scholarship expense as well.

For a private school family, the most obvious use remains tuition. For a student in a traditional public school, the scholarship could instead pay for an eligible tutoring service, transportation, technology, or another educational support that the school or family otherwise might struggle to afford.

Wiley has spent recent months meeting with public school superintendents and school business officials to explore where the money could fit into their systems, recognizing that both districts and IQE are moving into unfamiliar territory.

“It’s a learning curve I think for both of us,” Wiley divulges. For public districts, “it’s not something they’ve been able to really participate a ton in in the past,” while IQE must think beyond tuition and fees and work through a much broader menu of expenses.

She points to those categories of technology, transportation, before- and after-school care, and high-dosage tutoring as relatively straightforward entry points.

“If it’s not easy, right? It’s gonna not get used like it should,” Wiley observes. “I think if we can find a couple of expense categories that are straightforward … they get used to it. And I think that kind of opens up the, you know, well, what about this kind of opportunity?”

The federal structure also means those opportunities do not necessarily depend on Indiana donors. A taxpayer living in another state can contribute to an SGO in a participating state, even when the donor’s own state has not joined the program; only the students receiving scholarships must reside in a participating state.

IQE has already taken advantage of that by advertising in Illinois, which we informed you about in our most recent issue. Illinois has not opted into the program, as have most primarily Democratic-led states. So, IQE came up with the idea to inform families in the state, via a billboard, that they can donate to support Indiana students and still receive the federal tax credit.

Wiley hopes Illinois residents with ties to Indiana schools may contribute across the border.

“As a taxpayer, you can be anywhere,” she asserts. “If you’ve got grandparents, you know, family members, whatever, alumni from your school in another state, it’s going to be important for them to understand they can still give and support students and still get the tax credit.”

Getting taxpayers to understand that proposition may determine whether the federal program becomes a major new source of education funding or remains relatively small in its opening years.

IQE is approaching employers, private schools, traditional public districts, charter schools and microschools as it builds both sides of the program – donors willing to supply money and schools or providers capable of turning it into eligible scholarships. Wiley expects the organization to add digital advertising as January approaches, but much of the early work involves direct outreach.

“We’re working with honestly anyone and everyone we can get with,” Wiley explains. On the donor side, that includes large employers whose workers could use the credit to support Indiana students; on the education side, IQE is reaching beyond its longtime private school partners to public school superintendents, charter operators, and microschools.

The organization’s technology partner is also developing school-specific QR codes, allowing a school to promote a link that takes prospective donors directly to an IQE contribution page with that school already identified as the donor’s preferred destination. “Earned media and anyone and everyone we can get in front of is what we’re trying to do,” Wiley states.

IQE has not yet pushed the federal program as heavily as Wiley expects it eventually will, partly because the organization does not want potential donors confusing it with Indiana’s existing scholarship tax credit during the busiest giving months at the end of 2026. Contributions made before January 1 cannot qualify for the federal credit, as donations can’t be formally collected until January 1, 2027.

“We’ve gotten some (pledges), but I wouldn’t say a lot,” is how Wiley describes the early donor interest.

IQE instead is collecting “expressions of interest,” so it can contact potential contributors once the federal program goes live and begin converting donations into scholarships.

The organization has set a first-year fundraising goal of $10 million, although Wiley readily acknowledges that there is little experience on which to base such an estimate, “I have no idea if we’re going to be able to do that or not.”

Wiley also expects skepticism precisely because the benefit appears unusually generous.

“The program does, being 100% tax credit, does have a little bit of an almost too good to be true kind of sense to donors,” she notes, comparing it with IQE’s experience explaining Indiana’s 50% state credit. “I think it’ll scale once people kind of try it and realize it’s real and it’s easy. But you know they might be a little hesitant at first.”

Nationally, the Education Freedom Tax Credit is generating the same argument that has long followed voucher and scholarship programs at the state level.

Supporters portray the program as additional education money that gives families more control over where and how their children learn, including families whose children remain in public schools. The Trump Administration estimates that by 2030 more than 11 million donors could contribute close to $26 billion annually through 600 to 700 SGOs, potentially supporting millions of scholarships, although the actual number and size of awards will depend on taxpayer participation and SGO decisions.

Critics counter that a federal tax credit still represents forgone federal revenue and could disproportionately support private and religious education, particularly because the private school sector already has established scholarship organizations and fundraising networks. If private schools and existing SGOs are more effective at informing families, soliciting donors, and developing systems for eligible expenses, they could capture a disproportionate share of the scholarships even though public-school students qualify.

Some public school and civil rights advocates have also raised questions nationally about academic accountability, civil rights protections, equitable access, and whether the federal rules afford states sufficient authority to impose additional safeguards.

Education Week’s tracker shows 31 states have either opted into the scholarship program or indicated they plan to participate, a group dominated by Republican-led states but not limited to them.

Some states are also raising concerns about how little authority they may have once they participate. The federal law establishes the basic SGO and scholarship requirements, and the proposed rules limit the extent to which states can impose additional restrictions beyond the standards set by Congress.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) has indicated she intends to participate, making New York one of the relatively few Democratic-led states moving toward the program. But a point of contention from her administration is the federal rules over how much control states will retain once they opt in.

Indiana enters from a different starting point than many states. Governor Mike Braun (R) opted into the federal program early in January, and state lawmakers subsequently placed responsibility for participation and the qualifying SGO list with the Indiana Department of Education. Indiana is also already operating universal Choice Scholarship eligibility for the 2026-27 school year, and it has long operated its own tax credit scholarship program, along with ESAs and CSAs.

The feds released proposed and temporary rules October 1, giving states and SGOs a framework for the January launch, but implementation still requires new systems for income verification, expense approval, donor documentation, and communication with school sectors that have little experience operating through scholarship-granting organizations.

IQE hired Tina Kaetzel, who previously administered Indiana’s ESA and CSA programs under the Office of the State Treasurer, to run its federal effort, and Wiley believes the organization’s years administering the state tax credit scholarship give it a head start.

Income verification, however, will be considerably more extensive than what IQE has handled in its existing program, prompting discussions with state agencies and other partners about how to streamline the process.

Whether the federal credit becomes a $10 million scholarship program for IQE, grows well beyond that, or takes several years to gain traction will depend not only on the tax incentive but on whether taxpayers, schools, and families understand a funding system that is neither a traditional charitable donation nor a conventional government scholarship. “There are just a lot of people to educate on it,” Wiley reflects.

The first year should also show whether the federal credit is used mostly for private school tuition or whether public and charter school students make meaningful use of it for tutoring, transportation, technology, and other eligible expenses.

An Indianapolis-based scholarship-granting organization is encouraging Illinois residents to take advantage of federal Education Freedom Tax Credits in Indiana.

The Institute for Quality Education launched a billboard campaign this week on Interstate 94 at the state line to inform commuters that they can maximize their federal tax benefits by donating to scholarship-granting organizations in Indiana.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has not yet announced whether Illinois will opt in or opt out of the program that provides individual tax credits up to $1,700 for donations to eligible scholarship-granting organizations. The scholarships are open to public, private and homeschool students.

American Federation for Children Senior Fellow Patrick Graff told Greg Bishop on The States that Illinois would receive over $1 billion in new education funding if 15% of the state’s taxpayers donated for the EFTC.

With numerous school districts proposing referendums and cutting costs in the wake of the 2025 state property tax law, school funding has become a topic of interest — including Indiana’s school voucher program, which cost about $500 million in the 2024-25 school year. 

Some area public school officials said that although they support school choice, they’re concerned education funding has not kept up with inflation, let alone the expanded voucher program, which adds to the overall cost of statewide education. However, a school choice advocate said Indiana’s voucher funding protocols are a model for other states.

Hamilton Southeastern Schools Superintendent Matt Kegley said each district in Indiana is affected differently by school choice scholarships, commonly called vouchers, and he respects the state’s decision to provide that funding. At the same time, he said, vouchers can affect what’s available to the public school system overall. 

HSE Chief Financial Officer Tim Brown likened state education funding to one big pie. 

“Every time you cut a slice into that pie, that is less overall funding for a traditional public school like our school district,” Brown said. “What has happened over the years is the income thresholds by which families can qualify for these choice scholarships has been expanded by a pretty significant amount, where maybe going back to the 2021 school year, that amount was in the $48,000 to $50,000 range for a family of four, to where it sits today at over $244,000.”

Brown said as the income threshold for qualifying families increased, so did the number of students within HSE boundaries using scholarships. But that doesn’t mean those students left HSE or would have ever attended public school. He said the students may well have gone to private school no matter what and voucher funding was “the icing on the cake.”

Westfield Washington Schools Superintendent John Atha agreed many voucher students likely would not be public school students anyway. He said when the program first was introduced in 2011, he was principal at the private Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis.

“My experience is, we did not have a lot of families who were (choosing public schools) start using vouchers,” he said. “We just had families who were already in with us, who maybe got some relief.”

That means more students in the funding pool for education dollars. Atha cited a 2023 Indiana University study that showed about 70 percent of Indiana voucher students already attended private school. 

“And those dollars have to come from somewhere,” he said. “What’s happened is, they have not expanded total spending on education — which is the state’s responsibility — to match the spending on the vouchers, especially for the added students who were already in private education.”

Atha clarified state education funding has increased, but has not kept pace with inflation, especially considering the estimated 75,000 voucher students that cost the state an estimated $500 million in the 2024-25 school year.

“If my costs are growing and enrollment is growing at 5 percent, and my budget’s only growing at three and a half percent, then obviously I’m going to have to do more with less,” Atha said. “And so, for me specifically, when I think about funding — if you want to keep the voucher program, it can’t be at the expense of traditional public schools. It has to be in addition to.”

Atha stressed that he supports school choice and believes that option makes education stronger overall. He said the conversation is about designing a funding system that doesn’t weaken public schools, which educate the majority of Hoosier kids. 

Carmel Clay Schools Associate Superintendent Roger McMichael said several changes in state funding for public education over the past 15 years – including expansion of the voucher program – have been implemented “at the expense of public schools.” 

“I would like to see the State of Indiana get behind its traditional public schools,” McMichael said. “There’s not a lot of conversation about what’s best for a child. (When the voucher program launched), it was for kids in a failing school who can’t get out. Now the conversation is, ‘Everybody gets a voucher.’ This whole conversation is about money. It’s not about the interest of the child.” 

Some of the schools receiving voucher funds are for-profit entities, McMichael said. Many of them are not held to the same set of standards as public schools, which are required to publish their budgets, answer to publicly elected school boards and provide special education services. 

“Private schools don’t have to play by those rules,” CCS Superintendent Thomas Oestreich said. “I understand that families make decisions they believe are the best for their children, and I respect that. I respect choice. However, choice without accountability is not an efficient way to spend taxpayer dollars.” 

Institute for Quality Education President and CEO Betsy Wiley countered that Indiana’s funding system for school choice scholarships works well, and actually is a model for other states. 

“The job is to fund and educate all of Indiana’s kids, and so (lawmakers) have been strong supporters in all of their policies in terms of dollars following the child to the school that they go to,” she said. “That philosophy held true in the establishment of the voucher program and how that funding took place.”

Wiley noted that the money follows the child no matter what school they choose, including another public school that isn’t their home district. She said the general belief that tax money should go to public institutions is an idea teacher unions have promoted. However, Wiley said, the funding belongs to the students and their education. 

She supports universal vouchers, with no income threshold.

“I believe that every student in the state of Indiana should be given access to their education funding that the state has allocated,” she said, noting that if students from wealthy families attend public school, they’re funded and nobody complains. 

In response to concerns about reduced funding for public schools, Wiley — who was former Gov. Mitch Daniels’ deputy chief of staff and worked many years in the Statehouse — said she has never heard anyone in public education suggest that education is adequately funded. 

“Every time, it’s, ‘We need more money,’” she said. “I think that it’s an interesting question because there’s not really data out there that suggests more money equals greater academic outcomes.”

She said the appropriate level of education funding is something for state lawmakers to determine, but the state should stick with its model of funding the education of all students, regardless of where they go to school. 

By the numbers

The Indiana Department of Education website has details about the school choice scholarship program, including how many students within each public school district use school vouchers to attend a private school or another public school.

Westfield Washington Schools reported that for the 2025-26 school year, 776 students used a voucher to attend a non-WWS school — an increase from the 2024-25 level of 302.

According to the state DOE’s annual report on school vouchers, at HSE Schools, 1,400 students within district boundaries used school choice scholarships to attend a different school in the 2024-25 school year.

Brownsburg Community Schools Corp. had 765 students use vouchers; Carmel Clay Schools had 541 students; MSD of Lawrence Township had 1,655; Noblesville Schools had 582; and Zionsville Community Schools had 166.

Indiana’s K-12 school voucher program reached a new milestone when students returned this month: All Hoosier students are now eligible for the state’s publicly funded choice scholarship to offset the cost of private school tuition, regardless of family income.

Gov. Mike Braun toured Cardinal Ritter Catholic High School in Indianapolis on Thursday to commemorate the occasion — a key priority of his administration and Republican lawmakers.

“I’m an entrepreneur,” Braun told students. “I embrace competition. I love choice.”

Lawmakers started the voucher program in 2011 with the aim of helping low-income children in failing school districts afford to attend private school, but gradually phased out income limits.

The final transition came in April 2025 when Republican lawmakers pushed to remove the income cap of $220,000 for a family of four — the equivalent of 740% of federal poverty level — so a projected additional 3,000 students could participate.

The change took effect for the 2026-27 school year.

Some 76,000 students used vouchers in the 2024-25 school year, the most recent data published by the Indiana Department of Education.

Scholarship amounts vary: The state either pays a student’s full tuition and fees or 90% of what it would have spent on tuition support if the student had remained in their local public school.

Preliminary estimates for the year show voucher amounts will range from $6,000 to $8,500, though final awards will be determined later.

Critics deride ‘handout’ to wealthy
Critics of universal vouchers say it diverts funding from public schools to wealthy families who already paid to send their children to private school.

“I spent 30 years in the classroom,” said state Rep. Tonya Pfaff, D-Terre Haute, a former Vigo County schools teacher. “I know what our public schools need to succeed, and it isn’t less money.”

“Universal vouchers take funding meant for the kids in our public schools and hand it to families who were already choosing private school, and already paying for it themselves,” she said in a statement Thursday. “That’s not choice. That’s a handout.”

Money for the classroom
The elimination of income limits for vouchers arrives as a record number of public schools are pursuing property tax referendums this fall, as districts contend with property tax cuts and new restrictions on when referendums can appear on the ballot.

Braun said state tuition support for public K-12 schools has kept pace with inflation, but said schools need to produce better results.

Lawmakers raised Indiana’s minimum teacher salary to $45,000 — a $5,000 raise — and required schools to spend at least 65% of state tuition support on teacher compensation.

“If you’re putting too much into administration, you’re not running (the district) well,” Braun said. “I’ll put more money into the classroom, but not into the buildings, and we’re already at a point where that takes a lot of resources.”

Still, Pfaff said in a statement the Vigo County School district has lost more than $36 million in taxpayer funding since lawmakers started removing the voucher program income limits, with little oversight.

“I know what $36 million buys in a school district: smaller class sizes, more counselors, updated resources and reading specialists for kids who are behind,” Pfaff said. “All public school boards should be sounding the alarm on this every chance they get.”

She added, “I’m not against helping a family that wants another option for their kid. But this program stopped being about that a long time ago. Right now, it’s a program that drains public schools to subsidize families who never needed the help.”

Indiana education officials released 2026 test scores Tuesday for the state’s third-grade literacy exam and elementary and middle school math and English language arts test.

The results will be used for the first time in the state’s new formula for grading schools with A-to-F letter grades, after a five-year pause due to the revamping of academic standards and the pandemic.

The state’s youngest readers continue to improve for the fifth consecutive year in a row on IREAD but did not see as big of gains as last year’s historic jump.

How elementary and middle school students are improving when it comes to ILEARN is harder to know this year since the state has had to establish new benchmarks for its scores due to the test’s format changing in recent years, along with 2022 legislation that required streamlining of K-12 academic standards.

Due to this change, this year’s ILEARN scores can’t be compared to earlier years, said Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner. However, the 2026 statewide scores are not too far off from the previous year

Overall, around 42.7% of students were proficient in math, while 42% of students were proficient in ELA. If comparing to last year’s scores, that would mean both saw an increase, with ELA seeing the biggest by about two percentage points.

ILEARN measures English language arts, science, social studies and mathematics skills for students in grades three through eight.

Jenner said their goal for ILEARN moving forward is to work towards seeing the same gains as they’ve seen with IREAD in recent years. 

“Our our assessment is very rigorous, and our goal will be to take that baseline where we see it today, and we will work to improve across the board,” Jenner said.

IREAD results for 2026

Last year’s scores for the state’s third-grade reading exam jumped to the highest it had been since before the pandemic with just over 87% of third graders reading proficiently.

This year, that score increased by 1.5 percentage points, now topping out at 88.7% of third graders passing the exam. Yet, that means 9,194 students are still not reading proficiently by the end of third grade.

State officials however remarked how IREAD scores this year have now surpassed scores from 2018-19, when proficiency rates were at 87.3%, before statewide scores dropped off during the pandemic.

“Our reading scores haven’t just recovered from the pandemic—they’ve surged,” said Gov. Mike Braun. “Five consecutive years of literacy gains show what’s possible when we stay focused on getting every Hoosier child on the path to success.”

Those results include all of the second graders who passed the exam while in the second grade. Students have a total of five opportunities to pass IREAD before moving on to the fourth grade.

The test is taken in person and electronically.

While the IREAD scores have continued to improve over the past six years since the state saw a severe drop in proficiency during the pandemic, the overall proficiency score has still not reached the state’s all-time high seen in 2013 at 91.4% proficiency.

The literacy rates increased for almost every student racial demographic from last year except for American Indian and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander student populations.

Other student populations like English Language Learners, special education and those on free and reduced lunch all saw increases in literacy scores from last year.

Some of the reasons Jenner attributes the continued growth seen in the IREAD scores is the administering of the test in the second grade, which enables teachers to catch struggling students sooner. She also attributed it to the state’s literacy cadre program, which helps pay for a literacy coach to be embedded in schools to help teachers learn the science of reading.

Data around how many third graders will have to be held back due to Indiana’s new retention law connected to passing IREAD won’t be released until later this fall, Jenner said.

ILEARN results for 2026

The 2025-26 school year was the first time all schools and all grade three through eight students participated in the new version of ILEARN — three interim tests and one cumulative exam during the academic year.

This year’s results will now constitute the state’s new “baseline” when it comes to comparing year-over-year growth for the test.

The test is also given in person and electronically, and cannot be compared to nationwide assessments or other state assessments.

In previous years, the state released school-specific data for ILEARN results when announcing the statewide results, but since new cut scores had to be set this month, the state is releasing the specific data in September.

For this upcoming school year, the state plans to roll out new real-time reports that will be sent to parents at least four times per year and provide detailed data on where a student is in meeting the state standards.

Jenner said after Tuesday’s announcement that she plans to use the new federal funding flexibility waiver to their advantage in tackling where students are struggling the most.

“So now, what interventions do we need for various children to move the needle there?” Jenner said. “And the federal waiver will really open that up and allow us to spend exactly where it is needed, with less of the bureaucratic paperwork that in the past our schools spent hours and hours and hours on, we can focus on kids.”

High School SAT results for 2026

State leaders also shared how high school students performed on the SAT, which fulfills a required college entrance exam set by lawmakers. The assessment includes math, reading and writing sections.

Students getting a passing score for reading and writing on the SAT dropped by 2.6 percentage points from last year's scores, now at 51.9% passing.

Those who passed the test’s math portion virtually stayed the same, with 25.6% passing this year compared to 25.4% passing last year.

New school letter grades to come

This year’s ILEARN and IREAD scores will be pivotal for school districts this year since they will be used in the state’s new formula designed to grade schools on how well they’re serving students.

Later this year, the state is expected to hand out new A-to-F grades for schools. The new grading model is meant to emphasize what students accomplish rather than penalizing schools for what they don't.

Contact Government Reporter Caroline Beck at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.