A significant part of the LEARNS Act, passed by the Arkansas legislature, is concerned with third graders' reading proficiency. The new third grade promotion policy is intended to confirm a student is at the necessary reading level to advance to fourth grade. Josh McGee is an associate professor in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. He works on education transparency and accountability, and says Arkansas isn't the first state to adopt such a policy.
McGee: There are a lot of states — 16 states have a third grade promotion policy in law. The idea is that to be promoted from third grade to fourth grade, you have to show that you're proficient in reading. Usually that's done through the state test, but it can also be done through a portfolio approach. You collect information through the course of the class that demonstrates that the child is proficient in reading, and that is used in the place of the test. The idea is to make sure that you identify kids that are behind before we just move them through the system without these foundational skills, and get them the help they need to reach their full potential. The idea being that if you're promoted without being proficient in reading, you're going to be further behind — then and further in your life.
Research consistently links early grade reading proficiency to graduation rates and long-term success. It's a foundational skill. We don't know exactly when, but third-fourth grade seems about right. That's where you're switching from learning to read to reading to learn. You need to be able to read to do all the other subjects. If you can't read, you can't do social studies. If you can't read, you can't do science. If you can't read in those early grades, then essentially you're going to be behind and fall further behind as you progress through school.
Kellams: Someone might hear this and think there's a penalty — a punitive idea here. But the idea is to be positive, to be proactive?
McGee: That's exactly right. This is not supposed to be punitive in any way. In fact, the state is putting in place additional measurement in K-2. There are additional tests going in place — both summative and tests in the middle of the year — so that teachers and school leaders and parents know how kids are doing and progressing in their reading proficiency. And if they're behind, we can get them the support that they need.
The reason to have a third grade promotion policy is that it will focus attention on those who are behind before they are just pushed through the system. We want to identify those kids. We want to have a plan for those kids. Secretary Jacob Oliva and officials at the Department of Education have routinely said the idea here is not to hold a bunch of kids back — it is to make sure that we identify the kids that need support and get them that support.
About 36% of Arkansas students are not scoring proficient on the state exam. That means that two-thirds of our kids are behind, and that's not acceptable. Arkansas right now ranks 43rd on the fourth grade national exam and 39th on the eighth grade national exam on reading. We've got to fix this or Arkansas is going to fall behind as a state.
Kellams: You and I are talking toward the end of February. The school year traditionally ends mid- to late May, early June. If you have a third grader who's not quite proficient yet, is there time to get there?
McGee: There's plenty of time. Testing has a pretty broad testing window, but you can think about testing happening in April this year. My understanding is that the state is going to open up a second testing window for those who score below the proficiency level. There's time to catch up.
I don't know exactly how this is going to be implemented, but all signs — both from this state and the way it's been implemented in other states — are that the state just wants kids to get the right supports. If there's a plan in place, if we identify a student who is behind, if the district working with parents puts a plan in place for additional supports — and there are some supports that are named in law — then they will allow them to move on as long as that plan has a reasonable chance of getting them to proficient pretty soon. The idea is not to hold kids back, but to make sure that they get the support that they need to catch up.
Kellams: When you're in the first year of a program, there are challenges of awareness. In the other states where this has gone into effect — does it become smoother or more widely known the more years it's in place?
McGee: Yeah, absolutely. Anything new is hard. There are always implementation challenges, and there are also challenges just communicating about a policy or program and how it's going to be implemented. We've heard from school leaders and from parents there's a lot of uncertainty around this.
The way we've seen this roll out in other states is there are a lot of kids that are identified as behind. They create plans, and they don't retain as many students as were identified at the outset. Mississippi has had this policy in place for a number of years. About 25% of their students were identified as being behind in reading on their state exam. They only retained 5 or 6% of those students. For the rest of them, they created a plan — students, parents and districts worked together to catch them up — and they were not retained.
I imagine it's going to roll out similarly here in Arkansas. There's going to be a large number of students who are going to be behind, and we can't continue to accept their failure in reading because that's not serving them well. We need to create a plan to get them the support that they need. I expect that many of them will not be retained, but will be given a large amount of additional support to help them catch up.
Kellams: If you're a parent of a third grader, is there something you can do to make sure your child is on track?
McGee: Yes, absolutely. You can reach out to your school leader and their teachers and talk about this. I think a big part of this policy is to engage parents in these conversations. Many families understandably believe that their child is on track, even when statewide data show that most students are not reading proficiently. There's just a lack of urgency from parents around how their kids are doing in school. We've lost a lot of ground post-pandemic, and parents still don't see much urgency in getting engaged around their child's education.
This type of policy presents an opportunity to really focus parents on something that's very important for their child's learning success. I would strongly encourage parents to reach out to school leaders and teachers, talk through the policy, talk through how it's going to be implemented in their school, learn about it and try to get an understanding of where their kid is and what they can do to support their kid's learning. The idea is: be proactive about finding out how your child is doing in school.
School leaders and teachers welcome this. They want parents who are engaged — who are there not just to ask questions, but also to help out in the child's learning experience. Research shows that parents are very important in that learning experience. School is only one part of it, and to the extent that we can get parents engaged, we see better outcomes.
A lot of the states that have put in place these kinds of promotion policies — Mississippi included — we've seen lots of gains in reading proficiency in younger grades. Sometimes those aren't sustained into later grades. So this is not something where we put in place an evidence-based policy, walk away and say we've solved it. There's going to need to be a lot of focus from fourth grade on to help our students get to where they need to be. I hope that both the state, school leaders and parents will be engaged in trying to continuously improve our processes and instruction so that we can help all kids reach their full potential.
Josh McGee is an associate professor in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, working on education transparency and accountability. This conversation took place in the Anthony and Susan Hoy News Studio.
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