Third-graders’ big year under LEARNS

    Brawner

How many Arkansas third-graders struggling in reading will be held back at the end of this school year? Probably more than usual, but not as many as there could be.

Education Secretary Jacob Oliva discussed that question in an appearance before the House and Senate Education Committees Sept. 2.

Oliva provided an overview of the new Arkansas Teaching, Learning & Assessment System and other changes to the state’s education system. Students take the ATLAS exam to demonstrate whether they have learned the material. Based on their performance, they are ranked at one of four levels: Level 1 limited, Level 2 basic, Level 3 proficient and Level 4 advanced.

These levels are especially important for third-graders. On page 51 of the 2023 LEARNS Act is a provision stating that, starting this school year, third-graders who don’t score at least Level 2 in reading “shall not be promoted to fourth grade.”

The rationale behind the requirement is that third-grade reading proficiency is a key indicator of future academic success. Through third grade, students are learning to read. After that, they are reading to learn. They’ll struggle to learn if they struggle to read.

“If you have major deficits in reading in the primary grades, school becomes not fun,” Oliva said. “And then you become disconnected. And then you become a problem. And you don’t want to do it anymore. Because if you can’t read, you can’t succeed. So this is about promoting you with the toolkit to be successful at the next level.”

This potentially could be a big deal. Last year, roughly 10,000 third- graders across the state scored at Level 1. However, the LEARNS Act includes a long list of good-cause exemptions that would allow a student to be promoted even if he or she scores at Level 1. Those include the student being an English language learner, the student having a disability, the student being retained previously, or the student already having two years of intensive literacy intervention.

The last one is especially important, because that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen for every struggling student. LEARNS requires school districts to develop individual reading plans for students in kindergarten through third grade. Those include an “intensive, evidence-based literacy intervention program.”

In other words, the state isn’t going to flunk 10,000 third-graders at the end of this year. Oliva jokingly told legislators that “we do not intend to add student parking at middle school.” But it’s certainly possible that more students will be retained than have been in the past.

Like anything new, there will be challenges and hiccups with the implementation. Some of those were discussed in a meeting Sept. 11 of the Springdale School Board – Springdale being the state’s largest district. As reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Sept. 12, associate superintendent Melissa Fink noted that students’ performance on the ATLAS exam’s English language arts section will determine their reading scores. That’s the case even though the exam covers both reading and writing. A student could score at Level 2 on the reading section but Level 1 overall. That student would not be promoted without a good-cause exemption.

Participants raised other questions. School board president Nick Emerson asked why a student would have to repeat all of third grade if he or she is doing well enough to advance in all other subjects. Superintendent Jared Cleveland said he had spoken with the Department of Education about the fact that a student might quickly reach Level 2 reading that second year, but still have to repeat the entire third grade.

We’ll have to wait and see how the bureaucracy deals with all of this, as well as whether new legislation is needed. On the plus side, Fink said the district is intervening “day one of school” so students won’t have to be retained. In that respect, LEARNS is working as intended.

LEARNS is hardly the first educational revolution in recent Arkansas history. The others may or may not have made things better but did not lift Arkansas off the bottom tier of state rankings.

How successful will this revolution be? For third-graders, we’ll know more at the end of this year.

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Steve Brawner’s column is syndicated to 21 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@ mac.com.