North Carolina is a state where the Legislature have been actively revising education policy to promote privatization through vouchers and charters, while passing laws to make teaching more rule-bound and less rewarding. The state has experienced a large outflow of veteran teachers, from the profession and from the state. One of the more problematic legislative incursions into education is the new policy that third-graders must pass a reading test or be retained in grade. This policy was a carbon copy of Jeb Bush’s heavily promoted “Florida miracle.” It is also promoted by ALEC, which loves tough accountability for little children and for public school teachers (but not for teachers in charter schools and vouchers schools). This article explains why the third-grade retention plan is a very bad idea.
******************************************
Politics Driven Read to Achieve a Path to Failure for North Carolina
By Janna Siegel Robertson and Pamela Grundy
Across North Carolina, this has been the worst third-grade year in memory for teachers, students and families. The General Assembly’s requirement that third graders must pass the End of Grade (EOG) reading exam in order to be promoted has drained countless third grade classes of the excitement that comes with reading and learning, and turned the last months of third grade into a slog of worksheets, test practice and stress.
At the end of the school year, the Read to Achieve (RTA) legislation will force many North Carolina third-graders to repeat the grade, even though retention is enormously expensive and has been shown to harm students more often than it helps them.
The legislators who voted for this measure and the families enmeshed in its consequences should take heed. RTA is a perfect example of the problems that ensue when elected officials enact educational policies that fail to take into account the specific challenges that struggling students face, the solutions that have well-established track records of success, and the professional judgment of educators who know children as individuals, rather than simply as test scores.
For the well-being of North Carolina’s children, North Carolina’s citizens need to demand that their representatives either scrap or profoundly overhaul Read to Achieve. In addition, to avoid such negative consequences in the future, both legislators and citizens need to pay far closer attention to education legislation before it is enacted.
Few question the significance of third grade reading. Prominent education research organizations, most notably the Annie E. Casey Foundation, have made it clear that a child’s third-grade reading level is a useful predictor of later school achievement, graduation and adult success.
The challenge becomes how to help students reach proficiency.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation linked most of the reading problems it identified to the limited opportunities available to low-income children at early ages. It recommended actions that included supporting low-income parents, increasing access to high quality programs from birth to age eight and addressing the challenges of chronic absenteeism and summer learning loss.
North Carolina’s legislative leaders, in contrast, pushed through an underfunded mandate with punitive consequences. They required that the vast majority of North Carolina’s third graders pass the reading EOG or be retained (a handful of exceptions were allowed). They imposed these new requirements at the same time that they reduced prekindergarten opportunities, eliminated class size caps, and cut the ranks of teachers and teacher assistants. The only funding attached to the proposal was a small per-student fund to pay part of the cost of summer school for third-graders who did not pass the test.
The mandated solution – retention – flies in the face of decades of research which indicate that retention often sets a child on a path to dropping out of school. In addition, retention lacks a long-term track record of improving reading proficiency. In Florida – often touted as a model for North Carolina – third graders retained under a similar program showed initial reading gains over promoted peers. Those gains, however, faded by the time students reached seventh grade.
Read to Achieve thus:
1. Fails to address the problem at its source.
2. Imposes a solution that is enormously expensive, has clearly documented negative consequences, and has produced no long-term track record as an effective reading intervention.
3. Treats students as test scores, rather than individuals.
4. Further raises the stakes on standardized tests, which encourages teaching to the test at the expense of other, often more valuable learning activities.
5. Reduces many third graders’ interest in school and love of learning.
6. Places additional burdens on North Carolina teachers, who are already contending with low pay, larger classes, less support, rising expectations and shrinking resources.
These problems have emerged because Read to Achieve is a political, rather than an educational program. It is a superficial “high standards” measure that produces headlines but diverts money and attention from real solutions. It did not emerge from consultation with North Carolina educators, families, and education experts. Instead, legislative leaders copied it from a Florida program that has been heavily promoted by former Florida governor and potential presidential candidate Jeb Bush, as well as by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
If our legislators genuinely want to improve public education in North Carolina, they can do far better than following the lead of those who copy problematic policies from states whose students perform less well overall than North Carolina students. As the General Assembly reconvenes, voters need to let them know that we plan to hold them to legitimate higher standards, ones which draw on practices with strong evidence of effectiveness, respect the judgment of parents and educators, and support our children as precious individuals.
Janna Siegel Robertson is professor of Education at UNC-Wilmington, and co-coordinator of the UNCW Dropout Prevention Coalition. Pamela Grundy is co-chair of the Charlotte-based advocacy group MecklenburgACTS.org. They both have children in North Carolina public schools.
More evidence that educators and parents, not politicians and billionaires, should lead schools. Too bad that isn’t patently obvious to all voters. Maybe they’ve been suckered by fraudulent “school choice” language.
Yes they have.
I haven’t read the North Carolina statute, but I have read Ohio’s, and I think it will be a windfall for “outside providers”.
Here’s the provision:
“Retained students must also have the opportunity to receive intervention services from outside providers.”
“Who pays for outside service providers?
Districts and community schools must screen and approve at least one outside service provider for students who are retained by the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. ”
This “outside provider” idea was a disaster under NCLB in Texas. It was a money-sink and a rip-off, and it was particularly exploitive of low income families. It was marketed to them.
I’m not sure why ed reformers are once again shipping public education funding out of local schools:
“A Texas Tribune investigation of a No Child Left Behind tutoring program has uncovered years of inaction by state officials while money flowed to tutoring companies, delivering few academic results. This is the first story in a series on the program.”
http://www.texastribune.org/series/faking-the-grade/
As usual with ed reforms in Ohio, this reform was piled on top of all the other reforms with no consideration given to the cumulative effect of all the new mandates and any ripple effect on public school students, like larger class sizes:
“To accommodate the influx of retained students, Akron would be required to increase class sizes and inevitably divide any third-grade room that exceeds 30 students into two classes. That scenario has left some Akron administrators expecting additional teachers next year to be closer to 20.
“I think it’s going to have a huge ripple effect through multiple budgets, including staffing and intervention programs,” said Ellen McWilliams, director of curriculum and instruction, as well as assistant superintendent, for Akron schools.”
Some member of the ed reform political coalition wanted a Third Grade Reading Guarantee, and every member of the ed reform political coalition gets everything they demand when they lobby the statehouse, no matter how incoherent or insane the total education package is at the end of the “lobbying season” down there, so this went in with as little thought and planning as the rest.
How will the Third Grade Reading Guarantee work with the Common Core national tests? I don’t know. Could be all kinds of intersects and unintended consequences I guess, but “we’re building the plane in the air” with third graders as the passengers taking all the risk, so I hope they’re ready for a hell of a ride.
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/reading-scores-drop-across-ohio-as-state-changes-third-grade-test-1.452204
Janna Siegel Robertson is not forceful nor thorough enough.
It is not the child’s fault if he/she can not read. It is the mandates of the politicians, administration, teachers and the inappropriate reading program. Our children are being punished for the sins of the adults who shoot from the hip. Summer school isn’t going to do diddly squat. In the heat of the summer the children have to be hounded with more that doesn’t work?! Yes, I use slang because the people in charge don’t appear to have risen above that stage. Instead of listening to the experts they ignore them.
In order for students to become successful readers they need something more than a program anchored in phonics and those contrived, inane, stupid stories. They need a program that will build on the children’s background with stories that capture their interests instead of turning them off. Common Core’s phonetic program ignores student’s prior knowledge and their interests.
The people who demand retention evidently have not been schooled in the Constructivists philosophy – influenced by the Socratic method. It involves recognizing that all new understanding is linked to prior understanding. Socratic teaching engages students in dialogue and discussion that is collaborative and open… They avoid focusing on a ‘correct’ interpretation of the text. Evidently David Coleman who studies Classical Philosophy in England thought he was brighter than Socrates.
A skillful and insightful reading teacher will guide the students in constructing meaning, bridging it to their own knowledge and in turn making predictions, using higher order thinking skills including the imagination and making applications which goes hand in hand with encoding. This begins at the emergent level. Phonics is easy to teach but some children can’t learn that way and for others it is an incomplete approach.
The assessment tool is wrong.The Standardized test does not give the student’s instructional level. Marie Clay’s Observation Survey is far more informative for primary children.
Instead of pre-K give schools sufficient reading specialists to help the At risk Students. Children At Risk should be given double time in reading instruction from day one with a program that goes beyond phonics – a program anchored in the Constructivist approach. A reading specialist should work in tandem with the classroom teacher- two instruction periods a day, none of which would include drilling for an asinine test. Children should be instructed on their instructional level and never be forced to try and read on a frustration level which the Common Core Standards recommends children should do at times.
“Flunking kids is one of the most harmful tools in the arsenal of educators.” Shepard & Smith
Everyone who is responsible for implementing such a horrific punishment on our children should be made to experience the same humiliation they are imposing on these children.
Mary- you and I agree. I have witnessed dozens of children taught at their frustration level and taught to dislike reading and school. We can never get that time back with these children. The harming of children and teachers is why I am totally out of my comfort zone and fighting in the media, speaking at rallies, running events, and helping parents behind the scenes. What is happening to the teachers I educated and the children I work with absolutely breaks my heart. So why is this article not more forceful or thorough? I only make statements I can back up with peer-reviewed research and was limited to 750-800 words. I was told to write for lay audience. I am also trying not to get fired. Please add your remarks to that editorial or the others columns that have come out in NC. We could use your support. http://www.journalnow.com/opinion/columnists/janna-siegel-robertson-and-pamela-grundy-on-the-problems-with/article_5ac331b8-d538-11e3-ab56-001a4bcf6878.html
Think about it… What grade does the NAEP test to compare states? 4th grade and also 8th grade. If you want a huge jump in state NAEP scores, just retain the low scoring students so they can’t take the test. That is exactly what Tennessee did by passing a law to hold 3rd graders back before the last NAEP test. TN had record-setting increases on the last NAEP for 4th graders. It made the Governor and his apointed Ed Commish Kevin Huffman look like their reforms and Common Core were working.
May 14 next General Assembly session.
in NC, they require summer reading camps in some cases, but have not budgeted for these camps.
Line item c bothers me. They want LEA to find volunteers to tutor struggling students? I could sign up to volunteer, take a 1/2 day training class, but honestly I don’t think my help would make much of a difference for a child who is struggling. I know tutoring has value, but wouldn’t it be better to have funds for more teachers?
http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/BySection/Chapter_115C/GS_115C-83.6.html
It doesn’t make sense because it’s being made up as they go along. This legislation was not thought through properly because it did not arise out of a genuine concern of the NC citizenry. I see it like a wife imposing a new rule in her household because of something she read in a magazine that she and all her friends get, and not because her spouse and children expressed concern.
It takes a village. If we want a culture of readers we have to become one. Educational television has capitulated to “the market” and become an income-generating enterprise.
This is the equivalent of early tracking, which even the charlatan Hanushek argues has proven over and over to be is counterproductive and characteristic of the absolute *worst* performing school systems, historically and world wide.
I have always thought of assigning students to grade level by age as a form of early tracking that ignores the individual talents and abilities of students. Do you view this as tracking? Do you think it harmful? I am seeing an increase in “redshirting” students, especially boys, for both athletic and academic reasons.
Parents should familiarize themselves with the “Child Find Mandate.” Draconian retention policies put the onus on the child to be reading by third grade. Child Find puts the onus on the schools and districts to seek out struggling and dyslexic readers and provide the appropriate help under Response to Intervention (RTI). Legislators are expected to fund RTI protocols in their states to help struggling readers. Parents of struggling readers in NC can help push back on this legislation by invoking the Child Find Mandate.
Susan Crawford, Director
The Right to Read Project
Author of Help! My Child Isn’t Reading Yet — What Should I Do?
Judge Manning may have good intentions but he does not understand the Read to Achieve Law law. My comments at the end tried to help but this has me worried. I would love to sit down with him and explain how testing really works. http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/05/08/3846698/too-many-nc-children-arent-receiving.html?sp=%2F99%2F100%2F&ihp=1