We suppose if public school students become proficient readers in the third, fourth, or fifth grade, or beyond, it’s progress, but it seems to us the Tennessee General Assembly has softened its interest in the importance of students mastering reading early with new legislation headed for the desk of Gov. Bill Lee.
Coming out of the pandemic, the learning losses that showed up on state tests concerned the governor and legislature enough that they passed a bill saying that third graders who didn’t show proficiency on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) reading test would have to repeat the grade. But students had the option of taking another test (and showing proficiency), attending a summer course or agreeing to tutoring in the fourth grade to be promoted.
Unknown to many at the outset, a variety of exemptions also could be given to various students, and boy were they. By the time it was all said and done, of the 44,000 third grade students across the state who scored low enough to be at risk of retention, only 900 (around 1.2% of those who took the test) were retained. And that percentage was only slightly higher (1.2% compared to around 1%) than the average retention rate of third graders between 2010 and 2020.
In other words, some 43,100 students who didn’t show they were proficient in reading on their 2023 TCAP test moved up anyway. Of course, some of those made progress by the end of the year, during the summer or have with tutoring during this year, but it’s likely that many did not. We won’t know until the TCAP scores of those who weren’t proficient and were promoted are dis-aggregated.
Now, the state board of education has said fourth graders who aren’t proficient on their TCAP test or don’t meet their individualized “adequate growth” testing metric could be retained. And legislators in the newly passed measure say tutoring will be available to those who have advanced to the fourth and fifth grade without being proficient.