INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Sponsors of a reading proficiency bill on Wednesday said their measure would only hold students back after all other options had been exhausted.

State lawmakers vowed quick action in the fall after the Indiana Department of Education revealed 1 in 5 Indiana third graders can’t read at grade level. That action began to take shape on Wednesday when a Senate committee approved a bill containing several provisions meant to fix the problem. The bill is designated Senate Bill 1, indicating it is the top legislative priority for Senate Republicans.

Under the proposal, Indiana students would take their first reading assessment in second grade instead of third grade. Indiana Secretary of Education Dr. Katie Jenner told lawmakers about 60% of all schools in Indiana already have begun doing this and gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback from teachers and parents alike. If a student failed the IREAD test, schools would be required to offer summer reading intervention programs. Students would take the test again during and, if necessary, at the end of third grade.

A student who failed the IREAD test three times would be held back for one year. The legislation includes exceptions for students with intellectual disabilities or individualized education programs and for students who are English language learners. Students could not be held back for more than one year.

Jenner said the bill is modeled after legislation used in Mississippi, where reading scores went from 50th in the country to 29th over the past decade. Testifying remotely, Dr. Kymyona Burk, who as Mississippi’s state literacy director led the implementation of the literacy program, said more than three quarters of Mississippi students now pass the reading test the first time, a figure that rises to 85% with retests. She said the key is early, targeted intervention involving students, parents and teachers. If a student is held back, Burk said their repeated third grade must include reading interventions that weren’t provided the first time in order to be successful. She told the committee students who were held back showed significant and consistent improvements by sixth grade compared to their peers who barely passed the reading test and thus, were not held back.

Much of the afternoon’s testimony centered on the efficacy and appropriateness of holding students back. Fortville Elementary School Principal Dr. Vince Edwards said in his experience, retention did not produce the kind of benefits other types of intervention did and data on retention reinforced his findings. He said studies he has seen that support retention don’t do a good enough job of separating out other potential causes of improvement.

“If we’re doing all these things and we’re saying, ‘Well, we’ve had positive gains and that includes retention,’ it’s hard to say that that’s the bad part, but those social and emotional pieces, which again, have been studied greatly for a long time, always hang there,” said Edwards.

Indiana PTA President Rachel Burke said her daughter failed the IREAD test multiple times due to special needs, including a rare form of epilepsy. She said her daughter, who is now a junior in high school and currently fourth in her class of 820, would have been seriously harmed had she been held back a year.

Bill author Sen. Linda Rodgers, R-Granger, said she doesn’t want her bill thought of as a retention bill.

“Any child who is retained will have multiple opportunities to pass the IREAD and they will be provided with remediation,” Burke said. “What really isn’t good is to move that student on without foundational reading skills.”

The bill passed out of committee on a party-line vote, with Democrats citing the retention language as the primary reason for their “no” votes.