INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Gov. Eric Holcomb on Monday said fixing Indiana’s reading proficiency shortcomings is critical to the state’s long-term success.

Barely three hours before lawmakers began the 2024 legislative session, Holcomb unveiled his plan to reverse Indiana’s poor reading proficiency scores. He said lawmakers should require IREAD assessments in second grade instead of third grade to catch reading problems earlier. Schools would have to offer summer reading intervention programs to students who don’t pass the test, something education officials said can be funded out of the existing education budget. If a student still does not demonstrate reading proficiency by the end of third grade, they will be held back.

“We can’t gloss over this,” he said. “This is holding, more important than us back, it’s holding them back.”

An Indiana Department of Education report last year that showed nearly 1 in 5 Indiana third graders can’t read at grade level sparked calls for action among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. In his Organization Day speech on Nov. 21, House Speaker Todd Huston said improving those scores would be a top priority during the legislative session. On Monday afternoon, he said he was glad to see the governor taking the lead on the issue. He said he looked forward to supporting the governor’s proposal.

House Democrats said the low reading scores show the need to invest in early childhood education to ensure reading proficiency later on. They said some of Holcomb’s 2024 proposals for early childhood would help toward that end. Holcomb’s proposals include making child care workers who earn up to 85 percent of the state’s median income eligible for On My Way Pre-K and Child Care and Development Fund child care vouchers and allowing more K-12 public schools to qualify as eligible On My Way Pre-K providers. But Democrats said Republicans’ focus on holding back students who don’t pass the test is counterproductive.

“The data is clear around this that holding students back overall leads to no better outcomes, and oftentimes worse outcomes, for those individual students,” Rep. Carey Hamilton, D-Indianapolis, said. “I’m surprised to not hear solutions about how do we support these kids.”

Senate Republicans already have filed a priority bill that would require the state department of education to develop a way to identify students in grades 4-8 who are at risk of not being proficient and devise support systems for them. The bill has already been assigned to a committee.