Idaho Reading Initiative

Jared was given the Idaho Reading Indicator (IRI) test last week. He told me that they just took each child out in the hall for a few minutes and asked them to name letters and letter sounds.

Today, the teacher sent home the scores from the test. To be considered "at grade level" and get the top rating of a 3, the children needed to identify 11 letters in one minute. I'm not sure how they did the letter sounds. They won't even be graded on letter sounds until the end of the year.

Of course, I didn't think Jared would have any problem with the test, but I was curious to see his score. Instead of 11 letters, he identified the letters so fast, he did 58 letters in one minute! And he did 33 letter sounds.

The teacher wrote a note to me next to his scores, saying, "I'll be challenging him :) "

I'll be interested to see what she comes up with!

It's also interesting that this IRI is developed to catch students that are below grade level. There is no score for children above grade level--Jared still got a 3, even though he answered 527% above the requirements to earn a 3. As usual, the government and educational system gives all sorts of aid to children who have trouble keeping up, and has NO program or even guidelines for children who excel. One web site for gifted children put it more bluntly, saying that the government spends millions of dollars each year to help people who will likely end up being minimum-wage earners, but are cutting funding (by eliminating gifted programs) for the children who will one day cure cancer and build space probes. I'm not saying that I want a bigger piece of the government pie. I'd rather the government didn't hand out pie at all. But it's definitely a flawed system.