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Tennessee lawmakers as of this weekend have filed at least 18 proposals to try to address concerns about a new Tennessee reading law that could force tens of thousands of third graders to attend summer school this year to avoid being held back.
Last year the General Assembly passed the third grade retention law that, if implemented this summer could force students to either repeat third grade or be enrolled in mandatory summer school and after-school tutoring next school year. The law reduces the assessment of a child’s performance to a single standardized test, ignoring their performance in the classroom and undemocratically cutting out parents and educators from the decision to hold back a student.
Several proposals have been put on the table in an effort to fix the law. Some of the bills would gut the retention provision altogether, while others would keep the law mostly intact but extend related state-funded summer and after-school programs beyond this year.
Some measures would give authority back to local school districts instead of the state to determine which students should be retained. Others would add measures beyond Tennessee’s annual test for making such a decision. And one proposal would establish a new reading and retention checkpoint even earlier than third grade — making students who are finishing kindergarten take a reading test to determine whether they are ready for the first grade.
The law was passed in 2021 in response to a weeklong legislative session called by Gov. Bill Lee to address learning disruptions caused by the pandemic. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that began last year.
But, what the law does not do is include the child’s teacher and parents in that decision. Certainly, the teacher should be included in any decision that would hold a child back for a grade or mandate summer school. Never should a child be held back because of sweeping legislation that’s based on a single test score.
We agree that third grade is considered a critical year for reading because literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning. But reading scores have been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders meeting the law’s high threshold for proficiency based on state tests.
Third graders are exempt from retention if they were retained in a previous grade; have or may have a disability that affects reading; are English language learners with less than two years of English instruction; or retest as proficient before the beginning of fourth grade.
Numerous school boards across Tennessee have passed resolutions calling for revisions, though. Among other things, they’ve urged the legislature to let local educators make retention decisions, without giving final authority to the state. And they’ve noted that the state test is not a reading diagnostic test and, therefore, isn’t the best measure of a student’s reading ability.
The governor and the legislature may have had good intentions when passing the law, but, always, the child’s teacher and parents should be included in any retention decision. They know more about the student than Tennessee lawmakers, and, furthermore, you can’t lump every child in the same basket. They are individuals and that should be taken into consideration.