Many researchers were amazed to see that the state of Mississippi had a sharp growth in its fourth-grade reading scores.
Fortunately, the far-right Thomas B. Fordham Institute reveals how this happened.
The surest path to success in fourth-grade reading on NAEP is to hold back third-graders who did not pass the third-grade reading test. It works! It increased Florida’s fourth-grade reading scores. And it worked for Mississippi too! You have to give credit where it is due: Jeb Bush thought up this way to artificially inflate Florida’s NAEP standing. Research has consistently shown that kids who are held back are likelier to drop out of school later, but who cares about them? The scores and ratings are everything! Mississippi holds back a higher percentage of third-graders than any other state. How about those numbers!
One of the bright spots in an otherwise dreary 2019 NAEP report is Mississippi. A long-time cellar dweller in the NAEP rankings, Mississippi students have risen faster than anyone since 2013, particularly for fourth graders. In fourth grade reading results, Mississippi boosted its ranking from forty-ninth in 2013 to twenty-ninth in 2019; in math, they zoomed from fiftieth to twenty-third. Adjusted for demographics, Mississippi now ranks near the top in fourth grade reading and math according to the Urban Institute’s America’s Gradebook report.
So how have they done it? Education commentators have pointed to several possible causes: roll-out of early literacy programs and professional development (Cowen & Forte), faithful implementation of Common Core standards (Petrilli), and focus on the “science of reading” (State Superintendent Carey Wright).
But one key part of Mississippi’s formula has gotten less coverage: holding back low-performing students. In response to the legislature’s 2013 Literacy Based Promotion Act (LBPA), Mississippi schools retain a higher percentage of K–3 students than any other state. (Mississippi-based Bracey Harris of The Hechinger Report is one education writer who has reported on this topic.)
The LBPA created a “third grade gate,” making success on the reading exit exam a requirement for fourth grade promotion. This isn’t a new idea of course. Florida is widely credited with starting the trend in 2003, and now sixteen states plus the District of Columbia have a reading proficiency requirement to pass into fourth grade.
But Mississippi has taken the concept further than others, with a retention rate higher than any other state. In 2018–19, according to state department of education reports, 8 percent of all Mississippi K–3 students were held back (up from 6.6 percent the prior year). This implies that over the four grades, as many as 32 percent of all Mississippi students are held back; a more reasonable estimate is closer to 20 to 25 percent, allowing for some to be held back twice. (Mississippi’s Department of Education does not report how many students are retained more than once.)
Just goes to show: If at first you don’t succeed, fake it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Holy cow … retained TWICE in some cases. This is a failure of the school systems’ test and punish regime.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves.” –The Thomas B. Fordham Institute for Securing Big Bucks for the Officers of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
If Mississippi really wants to ace the NAEP, it will give the third grade tests to ninth graders. Then, the state can boast and brag about its #1 ranking. However, the first place finish won’t matter much to the people in the state. Most of them will remain poor and have few opportunities to dig their way out of poverty.
give them time, surely they will do just this…
These guys remind me so much of the Wizard of Oz.
Interesting that Fordham outed the fraud — is this because it’s a fraud committed by the public school system rather than the charter sector, which of course is the master of such frauds? (Also interesting that this was done by a Palo Alto, CA, school board member doing research for Fordham: a Peter Thiel-like right-wing techie? That seems very un-Palo Alto.)
yes, the revelation of the fraud (holding back 3rd graders to boost 4th grade scores) is interesting, since it came from TBF, which is all in for testing, Common Core, and punitive policies.
I can’t explain it, but I take some satisfaction in recognizing that the source matters.
I can’t be the only person who questions every single one of these claims. I don’t know why they over-sell everything. All it does it make them less credible.
It’s as regular as rain at this point- they’re currently touting Indianapolis as the new miracle “portfolio” city. Cleveland is a “portfolio city”. Denver is a “portfolio city”. Why don’t we ever hear those places touted as successes anymore?
They just ignore the less “successful” experiments and never mention them again?
Arne Duncan limited all his “analysis” to two cities and one state- New Orleans, DC and Tennessee. It’s the definition of cherry picking. Over and over and over, all we heard about were two cities and one state. They conducted these experiments all over the place. They just exclude the inconvenient states and cities?
In my opinion it should be a basic standard of journalistic ethics: if you fell for BS and hyped it, you MUST do a correction with a prominent mea culpa and analysis of how you screwed up when it turns out to be BS. If you bashed the skeptics who turned out to be right there needs to be more major penance. If you get a job in the so-called education “reform” sector, you’re just an ethical lost cause.
Great idea! A lot journalists seek to be provocative, but they rarely retract their erroneous statements.
Well, at least some of the journalists who fell for Theranos did regret it publicly and analyze their errors. And John Merrow, who fell for Michelle Rhee, has mea culpa’d that. But it should be a basic standard.
I don’t know because I’m not a researcher, but if I WERE a researcher who was genuinely interested in finding out “what works” wouldn’t I compare the “successful” Third Grade Reading Guarantee programs/states to the states where they weren’t successful with it?
They jammed this policy into a bunch of states. They’re never going to compare? We’ll only look at the states that had it where scores improved? How is this “research”? They choose the successful samples and ignore the unsuccessful samples.
They’ve been around long enough now and dominate enough states where we have lots and lots of ed reform policy. The last three US Presidents have been lock-step ed reformers. The US Department of Education is wholly captured, so much so that there are no dissenters at all.
They’ll continue to look at each program and state in isolation, forever?
I can just hear the old raspy teachers I used to work with complaining that the reason students do not know anything is that we do not fail anybody anymore. People should have to deal with their own laziness, was the mantra. One of these dynamic instructors used to come to class and write the assignment on the board and read the paper while the students tried to read the textbook and figure it out themselves. Then he would flunk a bunch of kids and talk about how you had to really good to pass his class.
Recalling this attitude, I have recently been wondering how we can find a balance between helping children learn and holding them responsible for their learning, as they certainly must ultimately be.
There is a national read-by-grade three campaign. The practice of holding students back a grade is not new, but in the olden days it was never based on test scores alone and certainly not based on scores from national tests. I am no expert in reading, but I have learned to question how questionable policies proliferate.
Right now, The Annie E, Casey Foundation is a source of the national “Read by Grade 3” campaign. It is financed by about thirty other foundations and corporations. You can read about the investors here: http://gradelevelreading.net/about-us/campaign-investors
The Annie E. Casey Foundation is also the source of widely cited and dubious research about reading. For example, the Foundation sponsored “Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation (2010, updated 2012)” by Dr. Donald J. Hernandez, sociologist at Hunter College (more recently at the University of Albany, State University of New York). I find no evidence that this study was peer-reviewed. https://www.aecf.org/resources/double-jeopardy/
In this study, the rates of failure in grade three reading were based on scores from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) Reading Recognition subtest. This test has 84 items said to increase in difficulty from preschool to high school. It is an oral reading test that includes items such as matching letters, naming names, and reading single words aloud.
To quote directly from the PIAT manual, the rationale for the reading recognition subtest is as follows: “In a technical sense, after the first 18 readiness-type items, the general objective of the reading recognition subtest is to measure skills in translating sequences of printed alphabetic symbols which form words, into speech sounds that can be understood by others as words. https://www.nlsinfo.org/content/cohorts/nlsy79-children/topical-guide/assessments/piat-reading-reading-recognitionreading
The author of Double Jeopardy then invented a way to treat scores on this oral test of reading “readiness” as if comparable NAEP scores for proficiency. But, NAEP reading tests are not administered until grade four! Moreover, according to NAEP, “Fourth grade students performing at the Proficient level should be able to integrate and interpret texts and apply their understanding of the text to draw conclusions and make evaluations.”
The author appropriated the standard for proficiency in NAEP, grade four, to make make judgments about the necessity for read-by-grade three policies based on an oral test in grade three. The study is not worthy of the publicity it has received.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation also financed a related study by Lesnick, J., Goerge, R., Smithgall, C., & Gwynne J. (2010). Reading on Grade Level in Third Grade: How Is It Related to High School Performance and College Enrollment? The executive summary, page 1 states: The results of this study do not examine whether low reading performance causes low future educational performance, or whether improving a child’s reading trajectory has an effect on future educational outcomes.”
So what was the take-away from this study?
The major conclusion, executive summary, page 4 is: “Students who are better prepared for a successful ninth grade year are more likely to have positive future outcomes, regardless of third grade reading status. The sooner that struggling readers are targeted for supports, the easier it will be to ensure that students are progressing on course toward strong performance in ninth grade, high school graduation, and college enrollment. NOTHING SUPPORTS GRADE THREE AS THE MAKE OR BREAK YEAR. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED517805
I looked at “Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children” published in 1998 by the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council. The brief discussion of grade retention on 280-281 did not support the practice of grade retention. It also noted that grade retention policies differed in several ways. Simply repeating the same grade is not the same as repeating the grade with substantial and well-placed help. There is a single reference associating grade retention based on poor reading skill with dropping out of school. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED416465.pdf
Please look again at the Annie E. Casey Foundation sponsored “Read by Grade 3” campaign.
Laura,
There is also a body of research showing the harmful consequences of retaining students in grade.
I am aware of that from several sources. There were also citations in the National Academy of Sciences report which was not short on identifying multiple causes of dificulties in reading, including a home and peer environment with non-standard English and difficulties of English learners.
Thanks also to retired teacher below for a vivid description of the PIAT.
I am familiar with the PIAT which essentially makes children “bark” at sounds in nonsense syllables to ascertain how well a student has mastered sound-symbol relationships. There is no context involved in this test, and it offers no information on comprehension, which, in my opinion, is by far the most important aspect in reading.
Work for all you are worth to get some sense in the government. The election is coming up and the person chosen to represent the Democratic party has GOT to be able to beat Trump, first and foremost , but hopefully also have the wisdom to understand and push for that about which we are talking.. I HOPE that the people, teachers even who would not vote for Hillary because, like so many of us, were upset with the Democrats who kept out Bernie, now know better, learned their lesson. .
This is off topic, but something that needs to be known by the public. Our public schools are underfunded but politicians felt that it was okay to spend $85 million of taxpayer money on two virtual schools that worked for profit and got dismally low academic results. I sent an email letter protesting to Gov. Holcomb [R-IN], Senator Niemeyer [R-IN] and Representative Chyung [D-IN]. Holcomb’s web page advertises that Indiana is the state that works and how other states are envious of our budget. Grrrr.
…………………………………..
In a damning audit, Indiana calls on two virtual schools to repay $85 million in misspent state funds
A special investigation by state auditors found that officials from two Indiana virtual charter schools misspent more than $85 million in state funding by inflating enrollment and funneling millions to a tangled web of related companies.
In what has become one of the nation’s largest virtual charter school scandals, Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy officials showed “substantial disregard” for following the rules and may have “focused on maximizing profits and revenues by exploiting perceived vulnerabilities” in local oversight and state funding processes, the report said.
The state auditors’ scathing report, released Wednesday, follows a series of Chalkbeat investigations revealing financial conflicts of interest at Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy and their dismally low academic results. The two virtual charter schools shut down last summer after allegations of enrollment fraud first emerged…
https://chalkbeat.org/posts/in/2020/02/12/in-a-damning-audit-indiana-calls-on-two-virtual-schools-to-repay-85-million-in-misspent-state-funds/?utm_source=email_button
Media won’t ask the staff at Fordham (a storefront in Dayton) to comment on the torture, rape and death of a homeschooled child in Dayton this week. Ohio newspapers burnish Fordham’s image by quoting their spin promoting the ALEC ed reform agenda. Reporters never seek comment from Fordham when the ed policy outcomes cause misery. They never tell the public that unaccountable, out-of-state billionaires fund Fordham.
Forty-seven percent of school aged victims of abuse were removed from school to be homeschooled. “When they were in school, parents knew there was were certain limits that couldn’t be crossed.”
If the world was just, Fordham staff and other public education destroyers would live everyday of that poor child’s life with him.
Diane, thanks for posting this. I spent several hours looking for the Mississippi Datum and failed to find it. Have not given up though.
And to the posters who posted links, Thanks!
People need to read the research about MS for themselves. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/southeast/pdf/REL_2017270.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3kLfhYYCdDxHbdoVdWE_I1aplQzXDE_uTxRN7U4tzysDlVNxtHNw64nxY