Fewer third-graders could be held back for reading in 2024, report … – Detroit News

About 5.6% of Michigan’s third graders could be held back next spring due to low reading scores, according to a report from Michigan State University’s Education Policy Innovation Collaborative.

The rate is an improvement from the 5.8% of third graders flagged for retention in 2022, but is higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 4.1% in 2019. Researchers say improvements in the retention eligibility rate were driven in part by pupils in urban areas and in traditional public schools.

It will be the final group eligible to be held back under Michigan’s Read by Grade Three Law, because the retention portion of the policy was repealed this past spring.

Michigan’s third-grade reading law, passed in 2016, required pupils to be reading at grade level before being allowed to advance to the fourth grade.

The law called for children to repeat third grade if they were more than one year behind in reading, which is measured by receiving a score of 1252 or below on the state’s assessment, the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as M-STEP.

When the M-STEP was canceled in the 2019-20 school year due to the pandemic, Michigan’s Ready By Grade 3 law was suspended. It was to be its first year in effect. The retention component of the law went into effect for the first time for students who were in the third grade in the 2020-21 school year. At the time, most educators said they would not enforce the controversial law.

According to Tara Kilbride, interim associate director of EPIC, the results provide evidence that early literacy should still be a priority in Michigan.

“It is clear from these results that a lot of Michigan’s third graders are struggling with reading,” Kilbride said. “Even though the retention policy is ending after this year, it will be important to continue to provide students with the support they need to develop early literacy skills.”

The analysis by EPIC showed that while third graders tested this spring had slightly lower retention eligibility rates, they were also slightly less likely to meet state standards for proficiency in English Language Arts overall.

In 2023, 65.4% of third graders at least partially met state standards, compared to 65.6% in 2022. By scoring 1271 or below on the M-STEP ELA, more than one-quarter of third graders qualify for literacy supports under the Read by Grade Three Law.

State Superintendent Michael Rice said children require more time in school with highly trained, certificated educators and tutors, and more diverse classroom reading materials that encourage children in a wide range of ways to seek out books as sources of information and inspiration.

Families or educators can seek to stop a child from being held back by requesting an exemption, but the final decision rests with a school district’s superintendent.

Once all exemptions are factored in, researchers found that only an estimated 2% of tested third-grade students could be retained under the law. EPIC officials said the rate is lower than last year’s estimated 2.4% of third graders, driven by recent increases in students changing districts, as more students eligible for retention in 2023 are expected to be granted an exemption for having been enrolled in their current district for less than two years. 

For more than two years, state lawmakers introduced bills to pause the controversial law or eliminate the retention requirement, all of which failed under Republican control. On Jan. 1, Democrats took control of the House and Senate following victories in the November election.

Public school districts have been following the law, which calls for screening young students within the first 30 days of the start of the school year, documenting reading intervention plans and contacting families.

State assessment results from the spring showed the number of Michigan third graders who are proficient in reading, a pivotal benchmark in education, dropped to its lowest point in the nine-year history of the test.

The results of the 2023 M-STEP released in August showed that 40.9% of third graders statewide passed the state’s ELA test, compared with 41.6% last year, 42.8% in 2021 and 45.1% in 2019, the year before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The highest ELA proficiency rate Michigan students have ever reached was 50% in the 2014-15 school year, the first year the M-STEP was administered.

jchambers@detroitnews.com