Veteran teacher Stephanie Fuhr writes as a guest blogger for Nancy Bailey, explaining why laws that hold back third graders if they don’t pass the state reading test are wrong and should be abolished. She includes a sample letter that you can send to your state legislator.
This punitive idea is part of the so-called “Florida model,” a creation of Jeb Bush and his advisors. It is bad for children but it gives a temporary boost to fourth grade reading scores. The Florida model is a collection of practices that are not grounded in research or practice, but in the belief that punishment is the beat motivator.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Florida model is a collection of practices that are not grounded in research or practice, but in the belief that punishment is the beat motivator.”
Also that “beating is the punishment motivator.”😀
This is very helpful, Diane and Nancy Bailey! Do you have a list of states with this policy? Thanks. Jane Maisel
*Jane S. Maisel* *School of Education * *The City College of New York * *160 Convent Ave, New York, NY 10031 *
*Phone # for the duration (203) 874-4586 * *Cell phone: (917) 678.1913*
On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 11:01 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: “Veteran teacher Stephanie Fuhr writes as a guest > blogger for Nancy Bailey, explaining why laws that hold back third graders > if they don’t pass the state reading test are wrong and should be > abolished. She includes a sample letter that you can send to your” >
Here, Ms. Maisel, is a list from 2019: https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/third-grade-reading-legislation.aspx
Thanks, Bob for answering the question.
Not all states retain but they do have laws that expect 3rd graders to be at a certain pseudo level.
In order for districts to reach these levels, they have forced kids to be tested in kindie if not earlier.
Kids are labeled way to early and not allowed to thrive as a false accountability system determines their reading path.
labeled — and then through the very labeling process not allowed to thrive. What the nation could SEE should it choose to look
Kids hated these pretests. They couldn’t read! But of course how can you know if they have made progress if you don’t have a baseline? This idiocy is repeated over and over up through the grades all for the sake of data. Test the kids at the beginning of a unit so you can test for “progress” at the end. Is there a teacher here who can’t tell if a student has learned anything?
Of course, then there is the argument that you can start where each student is, but building on a child’s knowledge does not depend on tests that are deliberately aimed above expected learning levels.
Yet another reason to subvert the racist system that pushes kids living with obstacles in the way like childhood stress, out of school.
The second time a child is retained maes them 20 years old when they are due to graduate. How many 20 year olds do you know will stay in school.
Do we want to push kids ahead without learning, or fail them into the school to prison pipeline?
Grade levels are moot, our system of failure has failed and the only ones not not fighting for a new system are racists and those supporting racism.
AND THAT MEANS YOU!
Is it not more complex than just racism? It strikes out as all races that are asked to reach farther and faster than they can. Growing up in a south impoverished by a lack of industrial development meant students in places distant got a better chance at education than I did.
There was a generalized hostility to education in the culture that heralds the modern acceptance of the anti-intellectualism that has fueled the right-wing reaction to science. Of course there was racism, stirred as it was by setting poor whites against poor blacks to prevent their banding together. Stirred also by the long held belief in general European superiority. Exaggerated also by beliefs in regional superiority.
All this coalesces in a crime against those who cannot do well early and often. THose in poverty are more often harmed than those with economic advantages. Thus societal bias against people of color find their way into these policy outrages through the economic disadvantage defined by what we call race.
Roy I think I’m hearing you say that poor kids have these barriers regardless of race. That was certainly my experience growing up, though I did not know many minority kids. The thing that keeps striking me in all these conversations about race is that it’s about poor kids– the fact that most of the poor kids are black or minority is just how we roll in the US of A.
“the only ones not not fighting for a new system are racists and those supporting racism.
AND THAT MEANS YOU!”
Pure horse manure.
No holds barred
Holding back in second
Is better than in third
And holding back, I reckon
Is better in the first
But holding back in kindergarten’s
Better than in first
And holding back before they’re startin’s
Best of all, of course
No holding back is better all around.. no grade retention is best answer.
It’s a false narrative that a standarized assessment of any form can determine a reader’s ability. Many of the assessments do not measure reading.
“Many of the assessments do not measure reading.”
Correction: All of the standardized assessment do not measure anything.
The most misleading concept/term in education is “measuring student achievement” or “measuring student learning”. The concept has been misleading educators into deluding themselves that the teaching and learning process can be analyzed/assessed using “scientific” methods which are actually pseudo-scientific at best and at worst a complete bastardization of rationo-logical thinking and language usage.
There never has been and never will be any “measuring” of the teaching and learning process and what each individual student learns in their schooling. There is and always has been assessing, evaluating, judging of what students learn but never a true “measuring” of it.
But, but, but, you’re trying to tell me that the supposedly august and venerable APA, AERA and/or the NCME have been wrong for more than the last 50 years, disseminating falsehoods and chimeras??
Who are you to question the authorities in testing???
Yes, they have been wrong and I (and many others, Wilson, Hoffman etc. . . ) question those authorities and challenge them (or any of you other advocates of the malpractices that are standards and testing) to answer to the following onto-epistemological analysis:
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition]
Notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”. The same by proximity is not a good rhetorical/debating technique.
Since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is no exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The basic fallacy of this is the confusing and conflating metrological (metrology is the scientific study of measurement) measuring and measuring that connotes assessing, evaluating and judging. The two meanings are not the same and confusing and conflating them is a very easy way to make it appear that standards and standardized testing are “scientific endeavors”-objective and not subjective like assessing, evaluating and judging.
That supposedly objective results are used to justify discrimination against many students for their life circumstances and inherent intellectual traits.
And holding back in womb
Is really best of all
There’s really little room
To quarrel with the call
lol
Cuz what’s another year?
Of holding for a woman?
Should have another beer
And hold ’em in the womb, man
Thank you, Stephanie Fuhr and Nancy Bailey! Yes, holding back these third graders is child abuse.
Thank you, Diane.
A few clarifications. Some states don’t retain but still have high expectations for their kids.
My children started out in Colorado and now here in Mn where they are testing kids in kindergarten to please the legislative gods around read well by third grade laws.
So if kids fail a standardized computerized test already in kindergarten, they are labeled and in many places pulled out of the classroom for “remedial” work.
This is extremely damaging. So not just a 3rd grade issues but all the way in kindie and even preschool.
If you have read “Let the Children Play” Nancy Carlson- Paige describes a horrific kindergarten setting I believe in Florida.
We are losing strong critical readers by these policies.
I had a granddaughter come home from kindergarten and announce she was stupid because she couldn’t read. Fortunately she is a tenacious little creature and is beginning to get the hang of it through memorizing books her parents read to her along with “Bob” books that she can tackle by herself.
I can remember reading negative research on retention forty years ago. It is a practice that should be used sparingly. Retained students are more likely to drop out, less likely to go to college and more likely to get involved with the criminal justice system. The research is clear, and meddlesome politicians that have no background in education are enacting harmful policies as a result not considering the harmful impact of retention.
As a ESL teacher that has taught many students that were years behind in education attainment, I have been amazed by the progress that many motivated, under educated students have been able achieve, I have seen students enter in fourth grade, with very little schooling from their home country and zero knowledge of English, graduate and go to college despite these obstacles. I am not saying that students didn’t have a very difficult time for the first four years or so. Teachers were also sometimes frustrated by serving these under educated students. I have seen reasonably intelligent, motivated students make up for lost time with appropriate supports and attention.
Feeding the idea that you are no good if you are not good when you are young is the competitive nature of the country. This is no doubt harmful. Two examples come out of basketball:
Elvin Hayes and Michael Jordan did not make the team until late in their high school career.
The opposite is also true
Arne Duncan peaked in high school.
Everyone told him he was great, which made him believe he actually was.
🙂
Good point!
But I’d even argue these tests and teaching due to these tests don’t capture real reading.
Stef: being a good reader is more a function of spending time reading than being able to jump through some imagined testing hoop.
SDP: a person who graduates from the most prestigious institution without continuing to read and study throughout life is no better than the ole boy I met the other night that spent all night making racial slurs and bragging about killing rattlesnakes.
Amen!!!
Beautifully said, Roy!
I was talking about Arne Duncan’s basketball playing, but it is undoubtedly true about his speaking, reading and analytical abilities as well.
Sorry, I did not know Arne was ever in the NBA in high school. I was also a legend in my own mind.
I am not a reading expert, but several years ago on this blog, I reported on the role of The Annie E, Casey Foundation (wealth from UPS) in pushing a national “Read by Grade 3” campaign.
The “Read by Grade 3” campaign is financed by thirty six foundations and corporations. The campaign target for 2020 was: “A dozen states or more will increase by at least 100% the number of low-income children reading proficiently by the end of grade three.” You can see a list of the investors in this campaign here: http://gradelevelreading.net/about-us/campaign-investors
The Annie E. Casey Foundation campaign was launched by a study it commissioned from Dr. Donald J. Hernandez, sociologist at the City University of New York and titled: Double Jeopardy: How Third-Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation (2010, updated 2012). This report, not peer reviewed, claimed that students who don’t read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave without a diploma than proficient readers. In addition, twenty-six percent of children experiencing both poverty and low reading scores fail to graduate from high school.
What counted as a reading score? The rates of failure in grade three reading were first based on 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 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
For the concept of “proficiency in reading” Hernandez chose to use the definition and test scores from the fourth grade National Assessment of Educational Progress. As Diane Ravitch has noted, this is a very high bar. 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.”
This is not to say that reading skill is unimportant but that the poverty indicators contributed mightily to reading skills as measured in this study. https://www.aecf.org/resources/double-jeopardy/
The Annie E. Casey Foundation also financed a related study: Reading on Grade Level in Third Grade: How Is It Related to High School Performance and College Enrollment. 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, in the executive summary, 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 (p. 4).
Nothing in this study supports grade three as the make or break year.
Neither of these commissioned studies from the Annie B. Casey Foundation tell us how to address the role of family income and rates of poverty among students who score poorly on reading tests.
Only improvements in test scores matter.
Thanks for the post with links.
Laura,
This is great information. Thank you!
The thing that is crazy is that states like Colorado where these 3rd grade reading laws have failed. They tested kids in kindie, and labeled them. Hmmmm. . . and they have had no gains. So the state has hired some consultant to determine the problem.
They also have certain programs that teachers can only use. Imagine the money these programs are making some company. And on top of that, the state is now making sure all districts are following these programs with fidelity. It’s such bogus.
Yes, certain skills are important in reading instruction but when they become far removed from the full purpose of reading, we create a generation of nonreaders.
I used this to work with my last child. What-Matters-for-Readers-for-Life-development.docx
All three of my children are different and needed different reading approaches. I can’t imagine a whole state telling each teacher how to teach every single child. A true one size fits all and it won’t work, but someone is getting rich!
better link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1owPeSGvdcXizdtuG7bXJ-vykIrGysz2m/view?usp=sharing
Hilarious
Kids differ, and they are on differing developmental schedules. Anyone who supports 3rd-grade retention hasn’t the emotional sensitivity or knowledge of child psychology and development to have anything to do with school planning at any level. This is a profoundly destructive practice, and it needs to end.
Lord, I hate the data mongers. We really need to grab our pitchforks and scythes and drive them out of education.
cx: our, ofc
A mine is a terrible thing to waste
A mine’s a terrible thing to waste
Especially when it’s data
Especially when it’s from your face
There’s really nothing greata
From recent Microsoft patent application:
“Cryptocurrency system using body activity data”
Abstract
Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data
“Examples of the body movement may include eye movement, facial movement or any other muscular movements. Furthermore, brain activity can be sensed using the fMRI.”
////////
Also see
Microsoft Patent Describes Tracking Brain Activity to Mine Cryptocurrency
The patent suggests using body heat, fluids, or brainwaves to validate blockchain transactions and award users with digital currency such as Bitcoin.”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/microsoft-patent-describes-tracking-brain-activity-to-mine-cryptocurrency
!!!!!!
General Ripper suspected Gates was up to no good long ago
My initial critical read.
For the record, I agree with Stefanie Rysdahl Fuhrs’ headline, “3rd Grade Reading Laws Are Harmful.”
However, I’m afraid I have to disagree with Fuhrs’ use of the links:
“Please look at this research.”
It is not research. Nor is it accredited in even the loosest standard.
It is an academic, news article, book, paper, argument, “Report” titled, “Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose” by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin, and Joan Wolfsheimer Almon.
And for the record, I agree with the Carlsson-Paige, Mclaughlin, and Almon call for actions found on page 9.
I found the report to be an interesting informational read spoilt by irritating double columns.
Fhur could have written:
Please look at this relevant paper by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin, and Joan Wolfsheimer Almon.
Or,
Please read “Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little to Gain and Much to Lose,” it’s worth your time, and the text is only 9 pages.
Or a better sentence than mine, of her design.
“National Education Policy Center and Education Deans for Justice recently posted this policy statement, “The Science of Reading,” which provides legislators with proven policies:”
The March 19, 2020 ‘Policy Statement on the “Science of Reading”’ by the National Education Policy Center and Education Deans for Justice “does not provide any proven policies:”
The following is a direct quote from the bottom of page 9, prefacing two pages of GUIDING PRINCIPLES:
“Since several states have passed or are rushing to pass education legislation targeting reading practices and policies, here are guiding principles for what any federal or state legislation directly or indirectly impacting reading should and should not do:”
Also, on page 2, the intended purpose of the document is given:
“Publication Type: For Your Information (FYI) documents present important content in a brief, engaging manner intended to promote further learning or action.”
If Fuhr had written something similar to:
National Education Policy Center and Education Deans for Justice recently published ‘Policy Statement on the “Science of Reading,” ‘which provides legislators and concerned parties with guiding principles intended to promote further learning or action.
She would have been spot-on. And pages 7 through 9 provide interesting links to explore.
“I echo NEPC in this conclusion:”
Fuhr is not echoing; she is making a direct quote. The sentence with the direct quote is confusing. It is like a last-second thought hanging at the end, out of place, like a Florida chad. Part of this issue is the verb (used with object) echo; there is no object for echo in the sentence. And one cannot echo a statement if the statement was not previously made. And this is the first time Fuhr stated the conclusion statement from the ‘Policy Statement on the “Science of Reading.”’
However, if she had written:
I agree with NEPC’s ‘Policy Statement on the “Science of Reading,”’ conclusion:
Or,
I support NEPC’s ‘Policy Statement on the “Science of Reading,”’ conclusion:
Or,
Better yet, omitted it. It dangles there like tits on a boar hog, hard to explain why they’re there when there is no apparent use for them.
The post is a reasonable templet to revise, edit, or use as inspiration for writing your Civic-minded letter. And regardless of my disagreement about the links, I am glad Mrs. Fuhr wrote the post and shared it.
How are kids evaluated in school today? If there’s no tests, homework, essay exams and speeches, what’s left? 😐🔔
Best assessments happen day to day. We’ve always assessed kids. Who says we’ve stopped. I’m saying teachers know how to.
Thanks! 🤓🔔
These tests for reading ability starting in K are ridiculous, & a serious problem. The idea that kids should be able to read at some point during 3rd grade is not terrible. It’s a good point at which to re-assess, & decide if certain students need intensive help [which means extra $ for reading assistance by specialists]. I would go so far as to say, maybe even do annual assessments starting at the end of 1st grade just to target who to keep an eye on, & again in 2nd grade, to put such programs in motion on a soft-pedaled basis.
As a parent I well remember the angst over this issue. Kids mature at different rates. One parent I knew spoke of parallel physical development, which seemed to me at the time to be ‘out there,’ but was true of my own kids: dental development. When they get those two big front teeth, watch for their reading prowess to pick up. If you’re a parent of several kids, you’ve probably noticed that the dental thing kicks in all over the place, over a period that varies by months and even years—likewise their readiness for solid foods; you’ll probably also notice wide variations between tooth development and their physical readiness for walking and crawling.
A big part of our problem with this has to do with our division of grades into age-groups of 4, 5, 6, 7… kids develop reading ability across a spectrum of ages 4-7.
I blame NCLB, RTTT, CCSS w/ their stds-aligned assessments. The “accountability” stds-aligned-assessments mentality is at the root of it– most particularly, the high stakes attached, which grade teachers and schools on student scores, with personnel evaluations & school funding stakes attached. All of that reflects recent decades’ ed policies’ increasing reliance on standardization, i.e., computer algorithms – which fly in the face of normal human development, which is quite variable—not standardized. Teachers and parents and all students of child development must stand up to and fight against this assault on education of young children. It is simply a predatory attempt to lower the cost of education by substituting demonstrably false binary computerized standardization for the professionalism of educated human teachers.
I taught same age groups and it wasn’t a problem. Reading workshop model allowed for kids to be working on similiar strategies while reading different books. Kids can be in the same age class.
And yes, reading is important and when taught correctly by an expert teacher, kids usually pick it up by 3rd or 4th grade. One doesn’t need a standard or across the board test to figure out if there are other issues besides time impacting a child’s ability to understand text.
But due to these high stakes standards and an accountability system that doesn’t even capture true reading ability, kids are losing instead if learning how to read.
I taught ESL in a small school district. In order to help my beginners I had grades 1 through 5 for half the day. It was like a one room school house, but it worked well because I compacted the curricula and used whole, small and individual instruction.
I’m open to multiple-age classrooms because I got excellent elemsch ed back in the ‘50’s in rural 1-room settings that had two to four grades per room (but totals of just 25 or so students – important!). What I don’t like about the typical single-age-group model: competition is baked in. Socially, among the kids, of course. And teachers can fall into a 1-size-fits-all approach if they’re not careful, with regard to both behavioral and academic expectations. But the main issue I think is that ed materials are developed narrowly to match what is an unrealistic picture of childhood development. Proof of the pudding: a system where those who don’t hurry up fast enough to please bean-counters require SpEd or are held back in 3rd.
However, the reading workshop model you describe sounds like a mini-version of the one-room schoolhouse. Children are moving at their own pace. I observed my middle child’s 1st-gr class and it fit that description, I think. There were long tables with baskets of books at various levels and kids gathered around one or another basket reading their choice, for pleasure, while teacher conferred with individuals or small groups. They had to have her permission to move up to the next basket. I liked the wire-mesh baskets: children could spot books they wanted to read in the next basket up, which inspired them.
Learning how to read isn’t linear.
Here is another way to look at reading instruction.
https://tutucker.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/im-a-reader-what-are-you/
Great links!
Love your blog think I’ll join.
Also another must read to better understand the current issue.
https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2015/05/24/beware-grade-level-reading-and-the-cult-of-proficiency/?fbclid=IwAR1EQ6AYXUxZvh2JqNEFo3BAwHWCOpULvXhTExQh-x6VFinvH03TmfKIAk0
Retention in any form is never beneficial…and especially for children in third grade. My grandson is very dyslexic. I would be appalled if he was held back for not meeting a third grade proficiency.
“I would be appalled if he was held back for not meeting a third grade proficiency.”
Especially nowadays when there are so many ways to access the curriculum that are not reading intensive.
The problem is that we are labeling way too many kids with reading issues when the problem is the reading programs that don’t honor what a teacher knows and how to specifically pay attention to what a child can do with their reading and where to take them next.
Instead we are testing and letting that test determine who they are as readers. That is the problem. That and forcing our children to be readers way before they are ready.
Thank you, Bethree5,
You make a lot of great points around the competitiveness involved into today’s classrooms. We can thank the business model’s influence for that. I got to teach before No Child Left Behind when we were working towards quality learning models. That is not what we are doing today.
Here is another one of my blogs that explains maybe better how you can teach the same age https://tutucker.wordpress.com/2019/12/13/community-centric/
Literacy acquisition is strategy based and not skill based. Nor it is linear. You don’t master one skill or standard and move on to another. Reading is a process. . . one student can have one strategy down well while another can be working on another strategy. It’s not vertical but horizontal.
Before NCLB teachers provided children with multiple ways to learn how to read and write all within authentic learning spaces and students were motivated by an intense interest in what was being learned. Teachers were constantly watching what a learner was doing and correcting in real time. Child spelled tree as “dree” a quick learning moment.
Curriculums can be dangerous. Reading and Writing workshops eliminate the narrow focus and frees learners to fly. They are not held back. They are given opportunities to show what they know in various responses.
Today we have made reading standardized and a one size fits all. This requires a change in the current system that allows the community to be in charge of their children’s learning.