Missing the Mark – Tennessee Education Report

Missing the Mark – Tennessee Education Report

MISSING THE MARK

Superintendents in Shelby County are raising concerns about recently-passed legislation that would make retention the default option for a significant number of third grade students. One Superintendent even noted the effort “misses the mark” of its intent and instead of being helpful, will actually have a harmful effect on students.

The Daily Memphian has more:

“I have never seen anything that will hurt students as bad as what they are proposing,” Germantown Municipal School District Superintendent Jason Manuel told the suburb’s Board of Education in a recent meeting.

The response from Manuel comes as his district sent a letter to Gov. Bill Lee and local lawmakers raising concerns about this issue and the insistence on in-person TNReady testing this year.

Meanwhile, it has been pointed out that TNReady is NOT a literacy test and using it for this purpose is ill-advised.

“The legislation is attempting to address third graders who can’t read at grade level, but the TCAP test doesn’t test to see if students can read at grade level,” Lakeland Superintendent Ted Horrell said.

Unsurprisingly, the leadership over at SCORE suggests this idea is a really good one – even though actual educators stand in strong opposition to it. Here’s SCORE CEO CONTINUE READING : Missing the Mark – Tennessee Education Report

Letter to the Editor: Tennessee Poised to Fail Students – radical eyes for equity

Letter to the Editor: Tennessee Poised to Fail Students – radical eyes for equity

Letter to the Editor: Tennessee Poised to Fail Students

In response to Third grade retention law causing suburban superintendents angst, I submitted the following letter to the editor:

While it is increasingly popular across the US to pass third-grade retention laws as part of larger reading policies, often under the guise of the “science of reading,” there are decades of research showing that grade retention is extremely harmful to children, especially minoritized students and students living in poverty.

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the largest organization of English teachers in the US, “oppose[s] legislation mandating that children, in any grade level, who do not meet criteria in reading be retained” and “oppose[s] the use of high-stakes test performance in reading as the criterion for student retention.”

As well, the National Education Policy Center (Boulder, CO) has issued a policy brief warning that states “[s]hould not adopt ‘ends justify the means’ policies aimed at raising reading test scores in the short term that have longer-term harms (for example, third-grade retention policies).” Further, states “[s]hould not prescribe a narrow definition of ‘scientific’ or ‘evidence-based’ that CONTINUE READING: Letter to the Editor: Tennessee Poised to Fail Students – radical eyes for equity

CURMUDGUCATION: Third Grade Reading Retention: Still A Bad Idea

CURMUDGUCATION: Third Grade Reading Retention: Still A Bad Idea

Third Grade Reading Retention: Still A Bad Idea

A former colleague of mine, a math teacher, used to say, "Don't even teach primary students math. Just teach them to read. By the time they get to me, if they can read well, I can teach them all the math you want."

That was many years ago, long before the rise of third grade reading retention laws. But those laws, while (usually) well-intentioned, are a terrible, rotten, no good, really bad idea.

Sixteen states require third graders to pass a standardized reading test in order to be promoted to fourth grade. Most of them allow for some exceptions, but not all, and not all the time.  It's long been conventional wisdom that fourth grade represents a new style of learning--that primary students learn to read, but once they hit fourth grade, they read to learn. But why turn that into a testing barrier.

Matt Barnum, the Chalkbeat reporter who occasionally decides to track down sources of conventional wisdom, traces the big push to some research from 2011. Authored by Donald J. Hernandez (Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Foundation for Child Development) on behalf of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, "Double Jeopardy" ties third grade reading proficiency (more or less as defined by NAEP) to high school graduation as well as tying both to poverty. 

Without getting into too detail, the report finds that students who are not reading proficiently in CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Third Grade Reading Retention: Still A Bad Idea

Schools Matter: Gov. Bill Lee to Sacrifice Third Graders to Help Him in 2024

Schools Matter: Gov. Bill Lee to Sacrifice Third Graders to Help Him in 2024

Gov. Bill Lee to Sacrifice Third Graders to Help Him in 2024

Prior to this week, the last time a Tennessee governor brought the General Assembly into Special Session to pass education legislation was January 2010, and it was all about getting more federal money to pay for the schools that state politicians are unwilling to support.  

Responding to call by Gov. Phil Bredesen (D), the TN legislature quickly met in January 2010 and passed into state law the necessary policies that would make the state a shoo-in for a half-billion dollar federal grant to be provided by Obama's Race to to the Top (RttT).  A core component of Tennessee's half-baked program was to use the money for a test score based teacher evaluation scheme, which added to Tennessee's reputation as an educational laughingstock.

Just this week, Governor Bill Lee (R), has ridden herd over another special session on education, this one ostensibly to address 1) what educational snake oil salesmen call the Covid-related "learning loss," and 2) the reading proficiency emergency at Tennessee's elementary schools.

Since "learning loss" scam is covered in this recent post, let me focus for a moment on Bill Lee's other manufactured crisis, reading literacy. 

Less than two years ago, Lee's Commissioner of Education, Penny Schwinn was providing this spin on recent NAEP CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Gov. Bill Lee to Sacrifice Third Graders to Help Him in 2024

NANCY BAILEY: 3rd Grade Reading Laws Are Harmful

3rd Grade Reading Laws Are Harmful

3rd Grade Reading Laws Are Harmful

By Stefanie Rysdahl Fuhr

Many states insist that students read by third grade. If students have difficulties they might be retained. Students might master reading later. They should not be punished if they aren’t reading perfectly in third grade.

Last spring I sent this letter to my state legislators.  Feel free to use it as a template for your legislators.

____________

Dear Senator XXXXX OR Representative XXXXX,

As a constituent, I urge you to repeal Read Well by 3rd Grade legislation. This law is forcing children to read in kindergarten and to be tested on some arbitrary level using inappropriate and even false reading assessments. This is hurting the children who are our future leaders. Everyone can recognize the absurdity of expecting all children to crawl at a certain age. Likewise, experts tell us that labeling children as deficient before they are developmentally ready to read is extremely harmful. Experts tell us that the average age a child learns to read is 7. Some read earlier and some read later. Please look at this research.

In Finland, where teens score at the top of international reading tests, children don’t start school until age 7 because lawmakers, drawing on the wisdom of experts, understand that many younger kids have not reached the developmental maturity for the more focused structure that we in Minnesota are imposing on younger and younger children. Forcing our children to read before they are developmentally ready is causing them to be falsely labeled as deficient.

Finland also knows that education is local. They respect the expertise and knowledge of local teachers.

National Education Policy Center and Education Deans for Justice recently posted this policy statement, “The Science of Reading,” which provides legislators with proven policies:

I ask you to look to such proven policies instead of legislation that promotes a narrowed CONTINUE READING: 3rd Grade Reading Laws Are Harmful