The Lake Pend Oreille and West Bonner County school districts saw differing results on the 2025 Idaho Standards Achievement Test.

The ISAT is Idaho’s state test on English Language Arts and math taken by all students in third through eighth grade and 11th grade. There is an additional science test, which is only taken by fifth, eighth and 11th graders.  

Students are graded into four categories, below basic, basic, proficient and advanced. The rates of students testing at or above proficient, called the proficient plus rate, will be used in this story. 

For LPOSD, its proficiency plus rates for all students increased over last year’s and continued to exceed the state average in all three categories. The district saw a nearly 3% increase in students who tested at a proficient rate or above on the math ISAT, marking a five-year high. 

The district continued to improve its proficiency plus rates in the other two categories but saw smaller increases of around 1.4-1.8% compared to 2024 scores. However, this improvement still outpaces the state trends, which saw slight increases of less than 1% or, in the case of ELA scores, dropping by 0.1%. 

“Seeing Idaho students hold steady when it comes to this year’s assessment areas is both a source of confidence and a definite opportunity to look ahead, to ensure that our students are prepared for their futures now and beyond K-12 education,” Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield said in a press release.    

WBCSD carried the most diverse results in the area, seeing significant decreases in proficiency plus rates on the English and math test, but gaining on the science test. Compared to last year, the students at WBCSD improved their proficiency plus rate on the science ISAT by 3%. 

This falls more in line with results from 2023 and 2022, although still lower than both. The district is still recovering from a 13% drop in proficiency plus rates from last year’s test. The district’s math test proficiency plus rate also falls close to previous results at 34% but marks a 5% decrease from 2024. 

The district’s ELA proficiency plus rates saw the largest drop, falling 11% to 40.8%. With the shift, there was a nearly 7% increase in students who tested below basic, the highest rate in the last five years. 

These results come after the Idaho Reading Indicator, which measures reading levels of kids in kindergarten through third grade, saw both school districts falling around the state average on that test.  

“We’ve shown what’s possible with K-3 literacy,” Critchfield said. “There is no reason to believe that similar growth isn’t possible when we focus our resources on the tools needed to help students grow and achieve.”