Effort underway to make reading proficiency exemption permanent
Laura Martin writes out the word “march” on a dry erase board and asks the small group of secondgrade students before her how many sounds they hear. One of the boys who has been squirming in his seat for the past few minutes bounces to the edge of his chair and shouts his answer: “There are three sounds even though we see five letters.”
“That’s right,” responds Martin, who is a Title 1 reading teacher at Rollingwood Elementary in northwest Oklahoma City. “That bossy letter ‘r’ is telling the letter ‘a’ to be silent.”
Martin spends her day working with groups of students who require additional help with reading, an area the state requires proficiency in by third grade in order to be promoted to the fourth grade.
“It definitely is more than teaching the ABC’s,” Martin said. “They have to know their alphabet, they have to know their sounds. They have to have that good foundation and then we build on that with sight words and vocabulary.”
But while students who do not score proficient on the state reading test are required to repeat the third grade, in 2014 the Legislature approved an exception if a committee of teachers and parents of the student approve promotion.
The exemption bill was led by Rep. Katie Henke, R-Tulsa, and required an override of the governor’s veto. But with the exemption expiring next year, some lawmakers are seeking to make it a permanent part of Oklahoma’s Reading Sufficiency Act, which was first implemented in 1997.
Henke has introduced House Bill 1760 this year, which would remove the sunset provision for the parent-teacher committees.
The governor’s office did not return a request for comment on her current opinion of the promotion exemption, but Fallin said in 2014, “It’s unfair to our children to send them to fourth grade without the reading skills needed to succeed.”
State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said she supports efforts to retain the parent-teacher committees.
“I think it’s very important that we always keep families engaged in highstake decisions for their children,” Hofmeister told The Oklahoman. “I support the RSA committee that includes a parent, the child’s teacher and others who have specialty around reading and leadership in the school that are going to affect children’s lives.”
Hofmeister said she likes the state’s system of allowing students to demonstrate proficiency in reading beyond the end of the year test, which includes state-approved screening programs any time before the end of third grade.
Students can also be promoted without a proficient score if they are a limited-English-proficient student with fewer than two years in an English language learner program, students with disabilities who are subject to alternative assessments and other criteria.
“The state test is a backstop,” Hofmeister said.
Seventy two percent of third-grade students last year scored proficient on the state reading test, a slight increase from the previous year.
Teachers who take part in the committees to promote nonproficient students said there are many reasons why a student who didn’t pass the test would still be promoted.
But for those students who are retained, educators said there is an effort to make sure they continue to be challenged in other subjects.
“We had a student that struggled in reading but is great in math,” said Theresa Wilson, an instructional coach at Rollingwood. “We did retain him, but he is able to do enrichment in math so he isn’t just repeating the same third-grade math.”
But the goal of the parent-teacher committees are to consider the unique abilities and challenges of each student that don’t show up on a statewide test.
“These meetings are not fun, they are full of tears,” Wilson said. “But I feel like the kids we have retained and the kids we have moved on, it has been the right decision for each one.”