Promoting unprepared third graders is a recipe for failure

A law that needs more carrots just lost its one big stick.

Since 2012, Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee has required all public school third graders to pass a state reading test. If a student did not pass, they had to repeat the third grade, even if the student’s guardians wanted them promoted to the fourth grade. 

Ohio is not the only state that has had stringent reading requirements for promotion to the fourth grade, and for good reason. From kindergarten through the third grade, students acquire the educational entry skills of reading, writing, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. 

After the third grade, students apply these skills to learn about history, geography, science, literature and advanced math. Students who have not mastered the fundamentals of learning before entering the fourth grade are not likely to succeed in school. Or as I tell the third graders I tutor, “Someone with just a screwdriver can’t build a house – they need a toolbox full of tools.”

In 2013, Mississippi, which has the nation’s highest rate of child poverty, passed a third grade reading guarantee law similar to Ohio’s, which includes the requirement for third graders to pass a state reading test to enter the fourth grade. 

Mississippi’s program is far more robust than Ohio’s, in part due to a $100 million reading institute created by Mississippi native and former Netscape CEO, Jim Barksdale.

Barksdale worked with the state government to implement teacher training in what is now called “the science of reading,” which emphasizes phonics. The state also expanded pre-K programs, particularly in struggling districts, and full-day school.

Mississippi diligently collects metrics on the impact of their efforts. The results have been tremendous. According to a recent story in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof, the state has “moved from near the bottom to the middle for most of the exams — and near the top when adjusted for demographics.”

Measuring success and data collection are important. In the case of Mississippi, the data proves that poverty and racism cannot be accepted as an excuse to allow students to fail. 

The Mississippi data also shows, contrary to common assumption, that repeating the third grade is not stigmatizing. In fact, by the sixth grade, students who have repeated the third grade are more academically successful than the students who just barely passed the third grade reading test.

COVID-19 not only revealed systemic problems in Ohio’s K-12 public schools, it made those institutional problems worse, particularly for the most vulnerable students – those with learning disabilities and the youngest students. 

This past June, I taught Ohio’s four-week Third Grade Reading Academy (TGRA) to eight Akron Public Schools students who had not passed the Ohio State Test (OST) for reading during the school year. Our six-hour days were full of activity, but generally we spent mornings working on phonics and afternoons going over the reading sections of recent past OSTs.

It is important to state that the OST reading section is obtuse and should be replaced. Many of the passages are outdated, dull and contain language few third graders, regardless of demographics, would recognize. As for the questions, many are so far above a third grader’s abilities, I doubt most freshman at the University of Akron, where I also teach, would score 100%.

My students this summer were bright and worked hard. Some struggled with behavior issues born of hunger, trauma at home, and exhaustion from staying up late playing video games. But by our last week together, the group had become a band of supportive cohorts – and I, too, feel deeply invested in their success.

Last week, I called the district to see if they had received my students’ test results. Because the OST has a written portion, it cannot be graded instantly by a computer.

“We expect the results in August,” the woman I spoke with told me. “But you might want to sit down. A few days ago, Gov. DeWine signed House Bill 33 into law, which this year allows all third graders promotion to the fourth grade no matter what their scores are.”

Going forward, if a student does not pass the OST, the state will promote the child to the fourth grade at their guardian’s request. I expect enrollment in the Third Grade Reading Academy, which has proven to increase literacy, to plummet as it will no longer be a last-chance option.

Last year’s third graders were kindergartners in 2020 when Akron’s school buildings closed that March for what was to be an entire year. Already facing academic risk as students in a large urban district with high rates of poverty, these children missed essential instruction. 

Ample research, particularly conducted during and after the pandemic, reveals that in-person instruction is far more effective than remote learning. This is particularly true for the youngest students and those with disabilities.

Furthermore, significant numbers of students in poorer districts had difficulties attending online instruction, functionally receiving little to no education for a year.

And now, instead of redoubling Ohio’s investment in its most vulnerable children by giving them one of the surest necessities for success in life – fluent literacy – the state is going to pass this group along unprepared for the fourth grade. A sure-fire recipe for failure.

In his piece on Mississippi, Kristof points out that before the state implemented its third grade reading guarantee, no matter how bad things were in other Deep South states, they could always say, “Thank God for Mississippi!” where it was inevitably worse. But, thanks to 10 years of investment and hard work, that is no longer the case.

Now they can just say, “Thank God for Ohio!”

This column was first published in the Akron Beacon Journal on July 23, 2023.