The Idaho House on Friday killed the budget bill for state Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra’s office for next year, amid a dispute over plans to replace the state’s early reading assessment test with a new, computerized version.
Sherri Ybarra
The spending measure, voted down 42-27, included no funding to expand the current pilot project of the new Idaho Reading Indicator test for kids in kindergarten through third grade, though the new test now in use at 58 Idaho schools was scheduled to expand statewide next year. The state Board of Education a day earlier voted unanimously to move forward with the new test.
Idaho Falls Republican Representative Wendy Horman, the sponsor of the budget bill, says a group of lawmakers and stakeholders is still working on a compromise on the reading test. House Education Committee Chair Julie VanOrden introduced a measure earlier last week to scrap the new statewide test and let school districts contract for whatever early reading assessment they want next year, while still conducting the 20-year-old “legacy” version of the IRI, which simply grades students on how well they read a passage. That bill had been scheduled for a hearing Friday, but was pulled from the agenda at the last minute.
The reading test dispute has emerged as a major sticking point to adjourning the 2018 legislative session. Lawmakers hope to wrap up their business by this Friday.
The Joint finance-Appropriations Committee must reconvene and approve a new budget that will win House and Senate support. (Spokesman-Review)
