Many Idaho school districts saw significant gains in reading proficiency during the 2025-26 school year.

Some saw up to 54 percentage points of growth from fall to spring, with the statewide average at 14.48 percentage points.

But the growth isn’t a pure picture of student improvement. That’s because last year was the first year of the redesigned Idaho Reading Indicator test, which uses Amira Learning’s reading assessment software. Unlike previous years, students in grades K-3 read to a computer that evaluated a host of skills, from fluency to recognizing sounds in words.

Students are tested in the first weeks of school in the fall, then again in the spring to see what they learned throughout the year.

But the first use of Amira last fall marked a huge learning curve, educators say, and the Idaho Department of Education substantially changed its guidance on how to administer the test in the spring.

State and district leaders said they’re now focused on overall proficiency when looking at this spring’s data.

“It was the very first time that kids had ever interacted with an assessment where you speak to a computer. Just looking at proficiency at the end of the year is our best bet,” said Kacey Proctor, Idaho Reading Indicator Program Manager. “Looking forward, we can definitely be looking at the growth factor.”

Changes in test administration weren’t the only factors local educators say affected scores. Staffing, literacy initiatives and additional practice with Amira also played a role.

Here’s a closer look at what changed and some of the biggest movers from fall to spring.

See test scores by district here.

Instructions changed after the fall test

Proctor said school leaders wondered whether changes in how the test was administered drove the higher scores, or whether students had actually improved.

In the fall, districts were told they did not need headphones and that testing a full class at once would work. Amira software would be able to pick up and evaluate individual student voices.

That guidance changed for the spring assessment.

“Now that we’ve done this for a couple of months, we are shifting,” Proctor told districts.

The best scenario is students being tested in a small group of five to six, with headphones with an attached microphone.

If small group doesn’t work for a school, Proctor suggests a staggered start, so students aren’t all simultaneously reading the same passage.

The test administration guidance hasn’t changed for the fall 2026 assessment being given this month. The state and Amira offered additional training this fall to help students and teachers prepare, Proctor said.

Cascade eclipses statewide proficiency

Last fall, 32% of Cascade test takers were reading proficiently. By spring, that number had climbed by 54 percentage points to 86%, the highest growth by any district statewide.

A slew of changes in the district from the top down made the growth possible, said Carrie Ferguson, K-8 principal.

Ferguson joined the district along with a new superintendent and new second and third-grade teachers.

“For such a small school, that’s kind of a lot of staff,” Ferguson said.

That staff turnover changed the dynamic district-wide. Cascade serves just under 200 students. Ferguson was previously a first-grade teacher and reading specialist in Oregon before moving into an administrative role, so working on literacy is a focus for her.

Ferguson said the staffing changes allowed the district to implement other changes. While the school already had curriculum aligned with the science of reading, they refocused on daily structured literacy work.

“All of our teachers were really committed to that,” she said.

The school switched to standards-based grading on report cards, which Ferguson believes helped teachers reframe their lessons. The district also uses a professional learning community model, which worked especially well last year with returning teachers sharing their expertise on the Cascade community and new teachers bringing fresh ideas from their previous school systems.

“This team that we have in elementary is just highly effective,” Ferguson said.

The district changed how the IRI was administered as well, shifting from whole classroom in the fall to small groups in the spring. Ferguson said monthly progress monitoring and practice time with the exam also helped.

Launchpad lifts Bliss

Last fall, 37% of test takers in Bliss were proficient. By spring, that number jumped to 74%, a 37 percentage point increase.

Principal Emily Roe attributes much of that growth to the now-defunded Idaho Digital Learning Academy Launchpad program. The program allowed a certified reading instructor to video call a class to teach some students while the classroom teacher worked with others.

“In our small classrooms, with not as much help, it’s hard for our teachers to level out where kids are and to meet their needs,” Roe said. “We saw huge benefits from it in a very short period of time.” 

Boundary County fixes bugs

In the fall, just 11% of Boundary County kindergarteners were proficient at reading, but the scores were largely due to iPad cases that muffled students’ voices.

This spring 67% were proficient, a growth of 56 percentage points.

Overall, Boundary County’s proficiency grew by 22 percentage points, to 65%.

Andrea Fuentes, director of K-3 literacy, said the district made significant changes to how the test was administered to see that growth.

Kindergarten moved to touchscreen Chromebooks, which cost the district $18,500.

The test was initially administered to whole classrooms at once.

“You could hear the teacher talking. It was picking up everything in the room,” Fuentes said. “Then we had to go to one-on-one administration to get it to where it was picking up the students.”

The district tested all 507 K-3 students individually in the spring and plan to continue the method this fall.

“You have that attention of the student,” Fuentes said. “You know that they’re not distracted.”

The district also purchased Amira Tutor for almost $5,000, which Fuentes hopes will give students more practice with the platform.

Nampa virtual sees proficiency regression

Nampa’s virtual school was one of 21 schools statewide that saw a regression in proficiency.

Nampa Online Virtual Academy (NOVA) saw a 21-percentage-point decrease in proficiency from fall to spring, landing at 43% proficiency. The decrease was the highest statewide.

The drop-off was due in part to inconsistency in who was tested. While 31 students were tested in both the fall and spring, only 25 were the same students, said Matthew Sizemore, the district’s community and media relations specialist.

“With such a small student population and the more fluid enrollment that can occur in a virtual program, changes involving even a handful of students can have a significant effect on the overall proficiency percentage,” Sizemore wrote in an email.

NOVA students also came to a Nampa campus to take the IRI in person, putting them in a different testing environment than what they typically learn in, he said.

Districtwide, iPad-based testing caused issues in the spring, with a number of students identified for possible reassessment.

“Because reassessment would have required those families to return to campus, it was not feasible to bring those students back for another testing session, so their original scores remained,” Sizemore said.

Just over 66% of Nampa students were proficient this spring, a 22 percentage point increase from the fall. The district made changes to test administration based on issues in the fall, including testing in groups of six to ten and using headphones.

For next school year, the district updated the iPads used by K-5 students, hoping newer devices will help testing continue smoothly.

Long-term changes pay off for Jefferson County

This fall, 44% of tested readers in Jefferson County were proficient. By spring, proficiency jumped to 75%, higher than the statewide average of about 70%.

The district serves nearly 6,300 students in Rigby.

For years, the district has expanded the number of paraprofessionals trained in the science of reading to help with interventions for struggling students. The district also used state literacy funds to pay for SMART training, said Dave Meyer, director of elementary education.

The biggest change, though, is creating “guiding coalitions” at each elementary school that are part of professional learning communities. Those teams look at data and develop plans to address concepts students struggle with.

The teams can be hard to get off the ground because they require vulnerability from teachers, Meyer said. The teams look at classroom-level data and address gaps, often through best practices.

“It has been a real effort districtwide, and we just have had a lot of buy-in,” Meyer said. “We’re just turning a corner.”

Harwood Elementary’s guiding coalition revamped the school’s intervention system this year.

The school started with 38% of students proficient and grew to over 81% proficient. Meyer said he agrees with state officials that the low proficiency at the start of the year had a lot to do with how they administered the IRI.

“We started trying to administer it whole class and that wasn’t very effective,” he said.

The district began testing in smaller groups with headphones and saw Amira picking up student voices better. The district spent about $2,500 on additional headsets to make that possible.

The technical administration accounts for some of the growth, Meyer said, but “what we’re excited about is that higher proficiency at the end.”

Ed News Data Analyst Randy Schrader contributed to this story.