One day, one test: Here’s why some children struggle to read
Thomas Denson sounds out words for kids in his Pre-K class at Cherokee Elementary School before working in small groups on reading classwork on April 12, 2019. (Jim Weber/The Daily Memphian file)
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The Institute for Public Service Reporting
The Institute for Public Service Reporting is based at the University of Memphis and supported financially by U of M, private grants and donations made through the University Foundation. Its work is published by The Daily Memphian through a paid-use agreement.
Despite two decades of expensive, expansive education reform — much of it focused on high-poverty neighborhoods and schools — the needle has barely moved on national and state reading scores.
“The socioeconomic achievement gap remains essentially as large as in the mid-1960s,” researchers from Harvard and Stanford reported in 2020. “In terms of learning, students in the top quarter of the socioeconomic distribution continue to be around three years ahead of those in the bottom quarter by eighth grade.”
Twenty years after No Child Left Behind, the federal law designed to close the socioeconomic achievement gap, the gap persists.
That has held true despite billions of dollars spent expanding charter schools, raising learning standards, toughening accountability laws, supporting new teacher training programs and developing a new, nonprofit educational support system.
One day, one test
Thousands of third-grade students in traditional public and charter schools in the Memphis area could be held back in the summer of 2023 as a result of a new Tennessee law focused on standardized reading tests. But similar laws in states across the country have shown mixed results. And in Tennessee, the law gives more power to a testing system whose methodology is widely questioned, whose approach largely ignores children with learning disabilities and emotional and socioeconomic challenges, and whose approach to scoring leaves experts frustrated and confused.
Read the full series:
New reading retention law goes into effect this month
Suburban superintendents wary of retention law
Here’s why some children struggle to read
Learning from the Mississippi Miracle
How the new retention law overlooks children with learning disabilities
One of every five children in the U.S. has dyslexia, ADHD, or some other learning, thinking or attention difference that impedes their ability to learn to read.
For children of poverty or trauma, the number is one in three.
“The pandemic has exacerbated the limitations of standardized tests, which reward a narrow set of skills and more affluent students who have access to specialized instruction,” the Economic Policy Institute reported in 2020.
Standardized achievement tests can show that third graders aren’t reading as well as they should at age 8. The scores don’t show why.
The American Academy of Pediatricians lists a number of factors that can explain a child’s “reading deficiency.”
Children with learning disabilities may chronically underperform academically because of their neurologically based learning differences.
On the other hand, acute academic decline in a child who previously was performing well may indicate onset of a physical condition or an acute stressor (bullying, ostracization, change in teachers or schools, family concerns, death of a close friend or relative, substance use, etc.).
Alternatively, behavioral or emotional challenges may present concerns before the neurodevelopmental disability that is causing the academic problem is discovered.
Challenging behaviors may include hyperactivity, inattention, anxiety, irritability, sadness, aggression, oppositionality and/or social isolation.
The childrens’ book “Shark School” was part of summer reading kits offered to 1,300 area children in 2020. (Mark Weber/The Daily Memphian file)
A child who displays oppositional behavior only at school but is compliant at home, where parents are not placing academic demands, may have an undiagnosed learning disability. Another child might behave well in the classroom but decompensate emotionally or behaviorally at home while completing homework.
Other factors that explain reading difficulties:
- The parental level of education below a bachelor’s degree, little or no shared reading at home, food insecurity, family history, medical risk factors and fair or poor parental health.
- Inadequate sleep duration and quality. Growing evidence reveals that average sleep time per night for children has gradually been decreasing over the recent decades.
- Social history, including household composition and adequacy of housing, family income sources and adequacy, transportation, food security, social network and/or degree of social support, and interpersonal violence or personal trauma history, can help to identify social determinants of health and well-being that may contribute to academic problems.
Children with a history of adversity and/or trauma (poverty, homelessness, abuse, neglect, parental mental health issues, etc.) deserve special consideration, educators say.
Sometimes their historical or ongoing emotional trauma and anxiety may be interfering with learning. In other cases, children with these histories may also have specific learning issues related to the impact of trauma on the developing brain.
Children in foster care or kinship care or children who have had involvement with child welfare not only have experienced trauma but also have possibly had multiple school changes. Each school change can essentially result in a loss of four months of academic skills.
AAP says children experiencing one or more of these factors may need the help of child psychologists or psychiatrists, neurologists or neuropsychologists, speech or language pathologists, occupational therapists, or physical therapists, or developmental-behavioral pediatricians.
Educators say third graders in Tennessee who flunk the annual TNReady reading test may need more help than a summer reading camp, an after-school tutor, or another year of third grade.
“It’s a misguided approach, but we’re going to throw millions and millions of dollars at that,” Mike Winstead, director of schools in Maryville., said when the state toughened its third-grade retention law in 2021. “We just need to scale it down, laser it to the kids who need the help, back here at the 20th and 30th percentile, who are not on track to be successful in life. Put the money there, and we’ll see some growth there.”
Read the full series:
New reading retention law goes into effect this month
Suburban superintendents wary of retention law
Here’s why some children struggle to read
Learning from the Mississippi Miracle
How the new retention law overlooks children with learning disabilities
Keeping score isn’t as easy as A, B, C
Topics
third grade retention third graders National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP TNReady No Child Left Behind ADHDIn partnership with
The Institute for Public Service Reporting is based at the University of Memphis and supported financially by U of M, private grants and donations made through the University Foundation. Its work is published by The Daily Memphian through a paid-use agreement.
David Waters
David Waters is Distinguished Journalist in Residence and assistant director of the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis.
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