Third Grade Reading Guarantee coming in 2013-14 for Ohio

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Dur­ing the August 13 Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing, dis­trict Direc­tor of Aca­d­e­mic Achieve­ment Angie Pol­lock briefly dis­cussed the Third Grade Read­ing Guar­an­tee, part of Sen­ate Bill 316.

The Third Grade Read­ing Guar­an­tee man­dates that begin­ning in the 2013–14 school year school dis­tricts across Ohio can­not pro­mote stu­dents who score below a cer­tain level on the state read­ing test; and stu­dents who are held back must receive extra help with their read­ing skills.

Why Sen­ate Bill 316?

A KIDS COUNT Spe­cial Report from the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion found that chil­dren who read on grade level by the end of third grade are more suc­cess­ful in school, work, and in life; and that ensur­ing that all stu­dents are pro­fi­cient in read­ing by the end of third grade helps nar­row the gap between advan­taged and dis­ad­van­taged children.

Other stud­ies show that read­ing below pro­fi­ciency lev­els at the ele­men­tary school age accom­pa­nies a host of other prob­lems that develop later in a young per­sons life – higher high school dropout rates, higher unem­ploy­ment, more teenage preg­nancy, sub­stance abuse prob­lems, and crim­i­nal activ­ity; and every stu­dent who does not com­plete high school costs soci­ety an esti­mated $260,000 in lost earn­ings, taxes and productivity.

“All stu­dents enter­ing the third grade must demon­strate between a Lim­ited and a Pro­fi­cient level of read­ing com­pe­tency before advanc­ing to the Fourth Grade, and this level will rise over time,” Pol­lock said in an inter­view last week. “An Eng­lish lan­guage arts diag­nos­tic assess­ment must be given by Sep­tem­ber 30 of each year for stu­dents in Kinder­garten through Grade Three start­ing in the 2012–13 school year. If the diag­nos­tic assess­ment shows that a stu­dent is not on track to be read­ing at grade level by the end of the year, schools must notify the par­ents in writ­ing that the school has iden­ti­fied a read­ing defi­ciency in their child.”

Pol­lock said let­ters would pro­vide a descrip­tion of cur­rent ser­vices pro­vided to the stu­dent, and also state that unless the stu­dent attains the appro­pri­ate level of read­ing com­pe­tency by the end of Grade Three, the stu­dent will be retained, a.k.a. held back a year.

Pol­lock also noted that SB 316 man­dates that for each stu­dent shown to be not on track, schools must begin read­ing inter­ven­tion imme­di­ately using research-based read­ing strate­gies tar­geted at the stu­dents iden­ti­fied read­ing defi­cien­cies; pro­vide a teacher who has either passed the read­ing instruc­tion test or has a read­ing endorse­ment on his or her teach­ers license; and develop a read­ing improve­ment and mon­i­tor­ing plan within 60 days of learn­ing of the student’s read­ing deficiency.

“The leg­isla­tive require­ments for reten­tion in the Third Grade include some excep­tions,” Pol­lock said. “Lim­ited Eng­lish pro­fi­cient stu­dents who have been enrolled in U.S. schools for less than two full school years and have had less than two years of instruc­tion in an Eng­lish as a Sec­ond Lan­guage pro­gram; and spe­cial edu­ca­tion stu­dents whose IEP’s specif­i­cally exempt them under the third-grade guarantee.”

Pol­lock said stu­dents who would not be held back also includes those who demon­strate read­ing com­pe­tency on an alter­nate read­ing assess­ment approved by the ODE (a list of approved assess­ments has not been issued yet); and a stu­dent who has received inten­sive reme­di­a­tion for two years and was pre­vi­ously retained in Kinder­garten through Grade 3 (a stu­dent that advances because of this excep­tion must con­tinue to receive inten­sive read­ing instruc­tion in the Fourth Grade, which requires an altered instruc­tional day to accom­mo­date read­ing interventions).

“The actual cut­off score has not yet been set by the state,” Pol­lock said. “The cur­rent pass­ing score is 400. Our typ­i­cal third-grader is read­ing in the 420’s, the high Pro­fi­cient range; beyond that is Accel­er­ated and Advanced.

“Stu­dents were not held back this year, but the state super­in­ten­dent must set the pass­ing score by Decem­ber 31,” Pol­lock con­tin­ued. “If this score were set at 400 we would cur­rently hold 24 stu­dents back; if it’s set at 390 we would hold eight stu­dents back.”

Pol­lock said that SB 316 was put in place for school dis­tricts that do not assess read­ing skills as vig­or­ously as Big Wal­nut and fail to inter­vene when stu­dents fall behind in read­ing assess­ment scores.

“We already give stu­dents read­ing inter­ven­tion; we have read­ing tutors in all of our build­ings,” Pol­lock said. “We start with K-8 diag­nos­tics — read­ing, math and writ­ing — and put stu­dents in read­ing inter­ven­tion groups as needed. But now the stakes are higher; we want to make sure we do more; we don’t want to hold any child back. Here at Big Wal­nut we’ve always wanted to make sure we’re look­ing at the whole child and iden­ti­fy­ing any child not on track.”

Pol­lock said stu­dents not read­ing on track would have 90 min­utes of inter­ven­tion dur­ing the day, in addi­tion to doing their other Third Grade work. Inter­ven­tion includes small group instruc­tion; it may also include an extended day or even an out­side school time.

“The bot­tom line is, if stu­dents are not read­ing at a pro­fi­cient level we are already giv­ing inter­ven­tions in the class­room and in pull­out groups,” Pol­lock said. “We look at all of our chil­dren as indi­vid­u­als, and are already pro­vid­ing inter­ven­tions to hit that cut score in advance.”

Pol­lock said if a child is not read­ing at grade level after this year’s first read­ing assess­ment, some­time in Sep­tem­ber par­ents will receive a notice from the school that their child is not at level and telling them about an inter­ven­tion; and if their child is not read­ing at grade level by the end of the year they will be retained.

“We really want to work with our fam­i­lies to make sure their chil­dren are read­ing at grade level and learn­ing,” Pol­lock said. “It helps if par­ents read with their chil­dren at home, and talk to them about read­ing. It’s also impor­tant that par­ents con­tact us if they have any con­cerns about their child’s read­ing or other learn­ing prob­lems so that inter­ven­tions can be addressed.”

Pol­lock said if par­ents have spe­cific ques­tions about their child’s read­ing assess­ment score or a spe­cific child’s inter­ven­tion plan they should con­tact their child’s build­ing prin­ci­pal or the building’s lit­er­acy facilitator.

“If par­ents have ques­tions about the Third Grade Read­ing Guar­an­tee not related to a spe­cific child I’ll be happy to field those ques­tions,” Pol­lock said.

Pol­lock also said the Ohio Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion web­site con­tains added infor­ma­tion about the Third Grade Read­ing Guar­an­tee. Go to < ode.state.oh.us > and put Third Grade Read­ing Guar­an­tee in the web­site search box.

To speak to Angie Pol­lock call the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Admin­is­tra­tion Office at 740–965-3010.

Posted by Gary Henery on Aug 29 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.