3rd-Grade Retention Isn’t Really About Kids

Should kids be held back in third grade if they can’t read? As of this year, 18 states say yes and impose some form of retention policy linked to a child’s reading scores, according to the advocacy group ExcelInEd. But the question of retention has been hotly debated as a tool to drive reading scores, with Ohio weakening its version in 2023 and Michigan dropping its requirement in 2024. On one side, research suggests that third grade reading scores are predictive of a student’s likelihood of academic success through middle school and into high school. Children who fall behind in the early years struggle to ever get back on track. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter On the other hand, it feels harsh to hold students back and separate them from their peers based on the results of a test. Plus, there is good reason to suspect that the children who will actually be affected by such a policy will be disproportionately Black and low-income. But there’s one more argument that, in my opinion, tips the scales in favor of third grade reading laws. In threatening to hold students back if they haven’t been taught to read properly, states are warning the adults to make sure each child is on track in literacy. When you start to see third grade retention policies as less of an intervention and more about how they change adult behavior, you can see it show up in the research literature. For example, a study from Michigan — a state where, thanks to various exemptions and remediation efforts, the number of kids who are actually retained is just 0.5% — found positive effects of its third grade reading law even in districts that did not hold any students back. A Florida study found that flagging a child for retention improved the academic outcomes of their younger siblings. One of the study’s authors speculated that, “the high-stakes retention signal for the older siblings might inform parents and educators about the educational needs of the younger sibling and induce them to act.” If the actual act of retention were the trick, these results should be impossible. As is, they imply that the laws are forcing adults to change their behaviors in ways that boost reading outcomes even for kids who were not retained. One of the most active champions of third grade reading laws is ExcelinEd’s Kymyona Burk, who implemented Mississippi’s third grade reading bill while serving as the state’s literacy director. Last year, she told EdWeek, “Retention is not the goal of the retention policy. …The goal is for students to be identified early and receive the tutoring, the attention, the individualized reading plan to prevent a student from being retained.” Notably, Mississippi’s retention policy did not just threaten to hold kids back. It also required districts to administer a state-approved literacy exam to identify any children in grades K-3 who might have a reading deficiency. If a student is identified as being at risk, districts have to draft an individual reading plan outlining the child’s specific deficiencies and a plan to address them. Schools also have to notify parents if their son or daughter has a reading challenge and provide parents with “Read at Home” lessons including guided reading assignments. Like other states, Mississippi’s law includes “good cause” exemptions, for students who are non-native English speakers who have been in the country for less than two years of instruction or who suffer from severe disabilities that prevent them from learning to read successfully. For children who are held back, the requirements get even tighter. Schools are required to provide them with at least 90 minutes of research-based reading instruction per day, delivered through small-group lessons, tutors or summer or afterschool programs. Some skeptics argue that Mississippi’s dramatic rise up the national fourth grade reading rankings was dubious, as some of the tested students were older because they had been held back in third grade (and thus given more instruction and time to mature). For example, three professional statisticians published a piece in January noting that, “It is a fact of arithmetic that the mean score of any data set always increases if you delete some of the lowest scores.” It is true that Mississippi has more students than average who are older than typical for their grade (54% versus 39%). But Mississippi’s rate is the same as Oklahoma’s and South Dakota’s, and Mississippi has much better reading scores than those two states. Besides, Mississippi has always held back more kids than other states — what changed was the formal tie to a child’s reading performance. If anything, states with third grade reading retention policies like Mississippi’s are taking early reading challenges more seriously than states without one. After all, student literacy is not likely to magically improve without some rigorous intervention. What’s more likely is that doors of opportunity will slowly close to them over time as schools pass them along from grade to grade. Third grade reading policies can certainly be harsh for the students who are subject to them. But they force schools to address each child’s reading problems before they have a chance to fester. Disclosure: Chad Aldeman is a consultant with ExcelinEd on an unrelated project.

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3rd-Grade Retention Isn’t Really About Kids — It’s About Adults Who Teach Them