How Are Indian River Students Really Doing? What the Just-Released Data Shows Us

By Dr. Michelle Parsons, District 4, Indian River School Board Member

The views expressed are those of the author and do not represent the Indian River School District or the Indian River Board of Education.

I recently received Indian River School District's Academic Assessment Summary, and it is a lot of information, about 70 pages of test scores, trends, schools, grades and student groups.

Michelle Parsons, M.D., IRSD School Board Member

Since many of you have also asked me about or commented on the recently released student test results, this is my attempt to work through all of that information, understand what it is telling us, and explain it in plain English and share with everyone.

It sounds like a simple question: How are our schools doing? Unfortunately, there isn't one simple number that gives us the answer. What I have learned is that there is no single national standardized test taken by every student in America that would allow us to directly compare Indian River School District students with students in every other school district in the country.

Instead, we have different measures at different points in a student's education.

In grades K–5, Indian River uses DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) to measure how students are developing important reading skills.

In grades 3-8, students take Delaware's statewide English Language Arts (ELA) and math assessments.

Multilingual learners in grades K–12 also take ACCESS, which measures their progress in learning English.

And in 11th grade, all students take the SAT as Delaware's statewide assessment in reading/writing and math.

As students move through and finish high school, we can also look at attendance, graduation, and college and career readiness.

That gives us a lot to work with. Instead of looking at one test score and deciding we're doing well or poorly, we can ask much more useful questions: Are we improving? How do we compare with other Delaware districts? Where are our strongest schools? Where are students struggling? And are the programs we are investing in actually working?

First, What Are We Measuring?

Before we dive into the numbers, it helps to understand what each assessment actually measures, at least that was helpful to me to try to decipher first.

In grades K–5, Indian River uses DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills) to measure the development of basic reading skills throughout the school year. Because students are tested at the beginning, middle, and end of the year, DIBELS also helps us see how much progress they are making.

DIBELS is not unique to Indian River or Delaware. It is a nationally used reading assessment developed through the University of Oregon's Center on Teaching and Learning. This gives us something particularly useful: national benchmarks that allow us to compare our students' performance and growth with students across the country.

And these are not based on a small sample. The University of Oregon's 2021–22 national DIBELS sample included nearly 2.9 million students from all 50 states. A more recent national analysis included more than 4.6 million students from all 50 states. The University of Oregon continues to update its DIBELS national percentile ranks and growth benchmarks.

That means we can compare Indian River not only with our own previous DIBELS results and national benchmarks, but also with other schools and districts using the same DIBELS assessment when they make their results public. The challenge is that there isn't one national public database containing every district's results, so those comparisons have to be found individually. (Again, WHY can't we have standardized national testing??!!)

Though not readily available, those comparisons do exist. Other districts around the country publicly report DIBELS results, and Appoquinimink also uses DIBELS in grades K–5. So DIBELS gives us something particularly valuable: the ability to look at our students' reading growth against a national benchmark and, when the data are available, against other districts using the same assessment.

In grades 3–8, students take Delaware's statewide English Language Arts (ELA) and math assessments through the Delaware System of Student Assessments (DeSSA), using the Smarter Balanced assessments. These tests tell us whether students are meeting Delaware's grade-level standards. Because students across Delaware take the same assessments, we can compare Indian River with the Delaware statewide results, with other Delaware school districts, and even school against school within Indian River.

Multilingual learners in grades K–12 take ACCESS, which measures their progress in learning English through listening, speaking, reading and writing. ACCESS is part of the WIDA assessment system, which is used across many states. That gives us common English-language proficiency standards and benchmarks beyond Indian River and Delaware.

In 11th grade, all Delaware students take the SAT as the state's assessment of ELA and math. This gives us another measure of reading, writing and math skills as students approach graduation. Because several other states also give the SAT statewide, it can also give us some useful comparisons beyond Delaware, which we'll look at later in this report.

At the national level, Delaware participates in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly called the Nation's Report Card. NAEP is particularly useful because students in every state take the same assessment, allowing us to compare Delaware with the rest of the country. But NAEP tests representative samples of students rather than every student, so we get a Delaware NAEP score, but not an Indian River or individual school NAEP score, which is why districts often push back on being held accountable to NAEP results. The Nation's Report Card provides Delaware's results and national comparisons.

That's why we need several levels of comparison: IRSD against its own history, our schools against one another, IRSD against Delaware and other Delaware districts, Delaware against states using the same or comparable assessments, and finally Delaware against the rest of the country through NAEP—the one common national assessment.

DIBELS: Are We Beginning to See Real Improvement in Elementary Reading?

OK, now we will get into the results. We'll start with our youngest students. During the 2025–26 school year, DIBELS showed substantial growth in the percentage of IRSD students in grades K–5 performing at or above grade level.

Grade	Beginning of Year	End of Year
Kindergarten	20%	58%
1st	36%	62%
2nd	43%	54%
3rd	47%	52%
4th	48%	50%
5th	43%	55%

The gains are particularly striking in the earliest grades. Kindergarten increased from 20% to 58% of students at or above grade level, while first grade increased from 36% to 62%. Looking separately at student growth, IRSD also exceeded the 60% national average for growth in every grade: kindergarten was 79%, first grade 76%, second grade 65%, third grade 70%, fourth grade 61%, and fifth grade 74%. That's an encouraging result and a credit to our students, teachers, and families!

These results are especially important because IRSD is now entering its fourth year using CKLA (Core Knowledge Language Arts) in our elementary schools. CKLA is the reading curriculum that incorporates phonics.

The next question may be even more important: Did students retain those gains? As the 2026–27 school year begins, the new beginning-of-year DIBELS results should allow us to follow these students into the next grade. If 62% of last year's first graders finished at or above grade level, where does that same group begin second grade? If 58% of kindergarteners finished at or above grade level, how many remain there as they enter first grade?

I am particularly looking forward to seeing those 2026–27 beginning-of-year results! They should give us our first indication of whether we are seeing strong growth during a single school year or lasting improvement in reading skills.

Ultimately, we also want to see these gains carry forward into higher proficiency on Delaware's state English Language Arts assessment beginning in third grade. If that begins happening consistently, we'll have much stronger evidence that the improvements we're seeing in elementary reading are lasting.

Reading: Are We Making Progress? Six Years Tell the Story

DIBELS gives us a picture of reading development in grades K–5. Beginning in third grade, we have another measure: Delaware's statewide English Language Arts assessment.

Students in grades 3–8 take the Smarter Balanced English Language Arts test as part of the Delaware System of Student Assessments. Unlike DIBELS, which helps us see how much reading growth students make during the school year, the state test asks a different question: Are students reading and performing at the level Delaware expects for their grade?

The percentages below show the number of IRSD students who met or exceeded the state's proficiency standard in English Language Arts.

Looking only at 2025 versus 2026 wouldn't tell us very much. Fortunately, IRSD's report takes us back to 2019, the last testing year before the pandemic, and then shows results annually from 2022 through 2026. Statewide testing was canceled in spring 2020 because of COVID-19. Testing resumed in 2021, though the sample size of tested students was still too small to report meaningful results.

The longer view gives us a much better picture:

IRSD English Language Arts Proficiency by Grade, 2019–2026

Percentage of students in grades 3–8 meeting or exceeding Delaware’s ELA proficiency standard

Grade	2019	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
3	52%	40%	42%	40%	34%	41%
4	59%	43%	42%	39%	33%	35%
5	63%	46%	48%	45%	45%	43%
6	65%	40%	38%	43%	39%	41%
7	66%	53%	51%	46%	48%	51%
8	63%	46%	41%	44%	45%	37%

There are some encouraging results this year. Third grade rebounded seven points, from 34% to 41%, and seventh grade increased from 48% to 51%. Those improvements matter.

But when we look at all six years, something else becomes very clear: IRSD has not yet returned to its 2019 ELA proficiency level in any tested grade. Eighth grade, for example, was at 63% in 2019 and is at 37% today. Fourth grade was at 59% and is now at 35%.

That doesn't mean nothing is working. In fact, the DIBELS results we just looked at suggest we may be seeing important improvement in basic reading skills, particularly among our youngest students. But growth and proficiency aren't the same thing. A student can make a lot of progress during the school year and still not be reading at grade level.

If the stronger DIBELS results in our younger grades represent lasting improvement, we should eventually begin seeing that show up in the state ELA results as those students move into third, fourth and fifth grade. That's a trend I think we should watch closely over the next several years.

And that brings us to another important comparison: How does Indian River stack up against other school districts? A 41% proficiency rate tells us a lot more when we know how Delaware did, how other Delaware districts did, and how students with similar needs are performing elsewhere.

How Does Indian River Compare with Other Delaware Districts?

Looking at IRSD over time tells us whether we are improving. But we also need to know how our students are doing compared with students in other Delaware school districts.

The Delaware Department of Education's 2026 assessment analysis identifies Cape Henlopen, Appoquinimink, and Caesar Rodney as some of the state's strongest and most consistent public school districts across different subjects and groups of students.

Cape Henlopen is particularly useful for us because it is right next door. In 2025, 58% of Cape students in grades 3–8 were proficient in English Language Arts, compared with about 41% in IRSD and 41% statewide. That's a pretty substantial difference. The state's 2025 assessment summary also identifies Cape as one of Delaware's strongest districts in ELA.

And Cape isn't simply doing well by Delaware standards. A national analysis using data from Stanford University's Educational Opportunity Project found that Cape's reading performance from 2022–25 was higher than about 78% of school districts nationwide. The Cape Gazette's report on the Stanford/Harvard Education Recovery Scorecard provides more detail on that comparison.

Of course, Cape and Indian River don't serve exactly the same student populations. IRSD has considerably more multilingual learners and more low-income students. So we need to look beyond the overall district averages and compare students with similar needs.

When we do that, there is some good news for Indian River. In 2025, 31% of IRSD's low-income students were proficient in ELA, compared with 37% in Cape but only 24% statewide. So while we still trail Cape, our low-income students performed considerably better than low-income students across Delaware as a whole.

There are also significant differences in proficiency among student groups within our district. In 2026 third-grade ELA, 50% of White students were proficient, compared with 24% of African American students and 19% of Hispanic students. Among students identified as low-income, 26% were proficient; among multilingual learners, 14%; and among students receiving special education services, 11%. These groups overlap. For example, many of our multilingual learners are also Hispanic, and students of any race or ethnicity may also be low-income or receive special education services. So these percentages should not be read as separate groups of students.

Demographics certainly matter, but they don't explain everything. If another school or district is getting better results with students facing similar challenges, we should want to know what they're doing differently and whether we can learn from it.

Math Remains One of the Clearest Challenges

Math is one of the areas where we clearly have work to do. In 2026, fewer than half of IRSD students met the state math standard in every grade tested, from third through eighth grade. By eighth grade, only 30% were proficient.

Grade	2026 Math Proficiency
3rd	43%
4th	44%
5th	36%
6th	33%
7th	39%
8th	30%

There is some encouraging news when we compare Indian River with the rest of Delaware. In 2025, 38% of IRSD students in grades 3–8 were proficient in math, compared with 34% statewide. Our low-income students also did considerably better than low-income students statewide: 26% were proficient in IRSD, compared with 17% across Delaware. In fact, that was the same proficiency rate as low-income students in Cape Henlopen. These comparisons are reported in the state's 2025 DeSSA assessment summary.

But Cape's overall math results show us there is still plenty of room to improve. In 2025, 52% of Cape students in grades 3–8 were proficient in math, compared with 38% in Indian River.

Delaware as a whole is struggling with math as well, although there has been some gradual improvement. Statewide proficiency increased from 30% in 2022 to 34% in 2025 and 35% in 2026. The Delaware Department of Education's 2026 analysis notes that statewide proficiency remains below the state's goals.

So the picture for Indian River is mixed. We are doing better than the state overall, and our low-income students are doing notably better than low-income students statewide. Those are real strengths. But fewer than half of our students are proficient in every grade tested, and by eighth grade only 30% are meeting the state standard. Math remains an area where we need significant improvement.

By High School: How Does IRSD Compare on the SAT?

By 11th grade, we have another way to see how our students are doing: the SAT. Delaware gives the SAT to all 11th graders as the state's assessment of reading/writing and math, not just to students who are planning to go to college.

And I think that's a good thing. Reading and math matter for every student, whether they are headed to college, the military, a trade, or directly into the workforce. For many students, high school is our last opportunity to make sure they leave with the basic academic skills they will need for whatever comes next.

Delaware isn't alone. Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island and West Virginia also use the SAT as a statewide assessment. That gives us a useful comparison because these states are also testing students statewide rather than only those who choose to take the SAT for college.

The College Board sets national college-readiness benchmarks for the SAT. Because the same benchmarks are used in every state, they give us a useful state-to-state comparison. Meeting a benchmark simply means a student scored at or above the level the College Board considers on track for college-level work; it does not mean the student answered that percentage of questions correctly.

State	Average SAT	Reading/Writng Benchmark	Math Benchmark	Met Both
New Hampshire	1,017	66%	35%	34%
Connecticut	989	58%	34%	33%
Colorado	987	59%	33%	32%
Michigan	953	52%	28%	26%
Indiana	950	53%	26%	25%
Rhode Island	935	51%	25%	24%
Delaware	933	50%	23%	22%
West Virginia	911	49%	17%	17%
New Mexico	875	37%	13%	12%

Source: College Board SAT Suite State Reports

Delaware ranked seventh of these nine statewide-SAT states, ahead of West Virginia and New Mexico. Half of Delaware students met the Reading and Writing benchmark, but only 23% met the Math benchmark and 22% met both.

Now let's bring this back to Indian River. Delaware uses its own proficiency standards for the SAT as its statewide assessment, which are different from the College Board benchmarks above. So we can't directly compare IRSD's proficiency percentages with those state benchmark percentages. What we can do is see how Indian River has performed against the same Delaware standard over time.

IRSD SAT	2022	2023	2024	2025	2026
ELA	33%	39%	41%	44%	35%
Math	25%	24%	20%	20%	15%

The math trend is especially concerning. SAT math proficiency has fallen from 25% in 2022 to just 15% in 2026. That's a ten-point decline in four years and means fewer than one in six IRSD 11th graders met Delaware's math standard this year.

ELA had been moving steadily in the right direction, increasing from 33% in 2022 to 44% in 2025, before falling back to 35% in 2026. I would like to understand what caused that decline and whether it represents a one-year change or the beginning of a larger trend.

And these aren't just test scores. By the time our students leave Indian River, we want them to be able to read well, understand what they are reading, work with numbers and solve problems. Those skills matter whether the next step is college, a trade, the military or a job.

Then How Can 84% of IRSD Students Be “College or Career Ready”?

Several of you have asked me about this, and it's something I want to better understand myself.

The Delaware Department of Education's Explore Delaware Schools page for Indian River reports that 84.06% of IRSD's Class of 2024 was “College and/or Career Ready.” Delaware lists several ways students can demonstrate readiness, including Advanced Placement (AP), International Baccalaureate (IB), dual enrollment, Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB), Delaware Certificate of Multiliteracy (proficiency in English and another language), industry-recognized credentials and work-based learning.

At the same time, our academic proficiency numbers look very different. In 2026, 35% of IRSD 11th graders met the state's ELA standard and only 15% met the math standard. These are different classes and different measures, so we can't directly compare the percentages. But the difference certainly makes me want to understand exactly what that 84% means.

Specifically, how was IRSD's 84.06% calculated? For the Class of 2024, how many students qualified through AP? Dual enrollment? ASVAB? An industry credential? Work-based learning? The Delaware Certificate of Multiliteracy, meaning they demonstrated proficiency in English and another language? Is meeting just one of these measures enough to be counted as college or career ready? What does a student actually have to accomplish in each category? And how many students met more than one measure?

I would also like to see the results separately for Indian River High School and Sussex Central High School, along with the total number of students included in the calculation.

These are questions I will follow up on with Dr. Owens and the appropriate district administrators, and if we need more explanation about how the state defines and calculates the measure, with the Delaware Department of Education.

Graduation Tells Another Complicated Story

By the end of high school, one of the most obvious measures is whether students actually graduate. For the Class of 2025, IRSD's four-year graduation rate was 82.58%, compared with 91.39% statewide.

But the district average hides a very large difference between our two high schools. Indian River High graduated 92.75% of its students, while Sussex Central graduated 78.74%.

That's a difference we need to understand. Why are graduation rates so different between two high schools in the same district? How much is related to differences in the students they serve, and how much is related to attendance, students moving in and out of the district, programs, interventions or something else? And is Indian River High doing something that could help more students graduate from Sussex Central?

Those are questions I want us to answer, not simply numbers to report. Delaware's four-year graduation rates and methodology are available through the Delaware Department of Education's graduation reports.

And What Happens After Graduation?

Graduation is important, but ultimately we also want to know what happens to our students after they leave us.

Are they working? What are they earning five or ten years later? If they went to college, did they actually graduate? If they completed a Career and Technical Education (CTE) program, did they find work in that field? Did they complete an apprenticeship or earn additional credentials? Are they able to support themselves?

To me, those are some of the best measures of whether we really prepared a student for adult life.

Right now, I have not found publicly available IRSD data that follows our graduates for several years and tells us what happens to them. The state's Explore Delaware Schools page does provide some information on college enrollment, but not the kind of long-term employment and earnings information I would like to see. I would like to find out whether the district or the state has access to that information and there may be plans in the works for the Department of Education to coordinate tracking with the Department of Labor, which would be a fantastic collaboration.

Imagine being able to tell a student considering one of our CTE programs: Five years after graduation, 90% of students who completed this program are working in the field, and their median income is $60,000. Or maybe the data would show that students completing another program aren't finding jobs in that field.

Either way, that's information students and families could actually use when deciding what path to take through high school and what to do afterward.

Where Do We Go From Here?

For the first time, we have some very clear goals in front of us. Delaware's Secretary of Education has established measurable student-outcome goals for 2028, and Indian River has incorporated those goals into our own planning.

These goals are:

53% ELA proficiency in grades 3–5

70% ELA proficiency in grades 6–12

60% math proficiency in grades 3–12 and a

91% graduation rate. 

There is also a goal of reaching 300 on the Delaware School Success Framework (DSSF), the state’s system for measuring overall school performance using factors such as academic achievement, student growth, graduation and attendance.

Those are ambitious goals from where we are today. But that's exactly why we need to measure our progress every year.

I also think the Indian River School Board is more focused than ever on measuring and improving student outcomes. We want to know what is working, what isn't, where we are making progress and where we need to do something differently. And we want that information brought back to us consistently so we can use it when making decisions.

For those of you in the 38th District, you'll also have an opportunity to hear more about this.

IRSD School Board President Mark Steele will be joining an upcoming 38th District Republican Club meeting to talk about student outcomes, where Indian River is headed, and what the district is doing to improve them at the next Club meeting on Tuesday, September 8th, 6:30 pm, location to be determined.

We aren't going to turn every number around overnight. But we now have much better data, clear goals and a Board that is very interested in seeing measurable improvement. Now we need to keep following the results, figure out what's working, and be willing to change what isn't.

Another thing the data shows is that districtwide averages don't tell the whole story. There are significant differences in student outcomes among individual schools within IRSD.

That's worth a closer look.

For now, my new motto is: Measure it. Record it. Report it. Compare it. Learn from it. Then improve it.

If you have a question or comment, please email me at michelle.parsons@irsd.k12.de.us

Would You Be Willing to Help?

Our community has an incredible amount of knowledge, experience and talent. Many of you have spent a lifetime building careers, raising families, running businesses, serving our country and learning skills that could benefit the next generation. If there were more opportunities to put that experience to work helping IRSD students succeed, how would you like to help?

Please answer the four quick questions below.

If you could personally help IRSD students succeed, how would you most like to help?

• 0%Read with students or help with math
• 0%Mentor a student through IRSD’s Creative Mentoring® program
• 0%Share career, job or practical life skills
• 0%Financially support student programs or use the federal educ

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