Email
During a spirited hearing, the Senate Education Committee reviewed three bills that address the challenge of assuring all third-graders read proficiently before passing to the next level.
Each took different approaches to this challenge but contained similar ways to provide the necessary assessment — intervention and remediation. The bills differed in the ramifications for a student not reading at grade level before promotion.
Debate is controversial about retaining struggling third-graders, but it is important to look at credible research and not base decisions merely on emotion. Everyone agrees that children should read proficiently and graduate from high school on time. No one disputes that support, remediation and interventions should be provided for children to improve.
Researchers believe that 85 percent of a child’s brain development occurs before age four. Focusing on children, during their earliest grades, is the most efficient and cost-effective way to teach reading. Whether there should be mandatory retention at some arbitrary point — third grade to fourth grade — is what heats up this debate.
Extensive research concludes that retaining struggling students does not improve their educational outcomes. Studies show that retained children do not graduate at higher rates than promoted children, and that retained children actually perform more poorly than similarly promoted students when both groups were provided intervention and remediation that address learning difficulties.
The key is that we must never give up on them. Some students simply learn to read earlier than others.
When research indicates that retention’s benefits are negative or neutral, it makes no sense to retain students. Rather, we must provide interventions (additional personalized reading work) to struggling students as they advance to age-appropriate grade levels.
The Education Committee tabled SB260, which required mandatory retention at third grade. SB260 provided exception points against retention, but these were difficult to achieve and basically assured that students not reading proficiently would ultimately be retained.
We’re aware that Public Education Department Secretary-designate Hannah Skandera is falsely suggesting that our committee voted down reading interventions. While our solutions to the issue are not the same, we propose solutions focusing on our children — not political rhetoric. There is more than one path to teach children to read by the fourth grade.
The Senate Education Committee recommends SB474 and SB640, which each have commonalities to SB260. Both bills focus on early reading instruction and intervention, but provide for these at all grade levels.
Students must believe schools are working toward their success — not penalizing them because they are struggling. Unlike SB260, both measures involve parents/guardians in the decision process to retain or promote at every grade level.
A statistic used against these bills states that third-graders who aren’t reading proficiently are four times more likely to drop out than those who do read at grade level. This incomplete statistic cites 16 percent of insufficient readers studied did not graduate and 4 percent of the proficient readers did not graduate on time. Thus, the source of “four times more likely” proclamation.
What isn’t revealed is that the remaining 84 percent of the struggling third-graders did graduate on time. We shouldn’t focus solely on this misleading statistic, but on early education interventions and the problems of poverty, which dramatically increases the chances that a student won’t graduate.
We support legislation that ensures a quality education for all students. It is also our responsibility to modify or stop legislation that is not based on credible research or doesn’t promote successful educational outcomes for all students. Educating our youth is the most important job of the state of New Mexico. While it has been made political, we will continue to vote for what is best for our children.
Sen. John Sapien is chairman of the Senate Education Committee. Sen. Bill Soules is vice-chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
