One day, one test: How the new retention law overlooks children with learning disabilities
Second graders do math exercises at Frayser Achievement Elementary School. Tennessee’s new third-grade retention law doesn’t address students with learning disabilities, which is the cause of many if not most reading deficiencies. (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.
There’s a gaping hole in Tennessee’s new third-grade retention law: the challenge of children with learning disabilities.
The law can result in students who fail to score high enough on the TNReady reading test being held back in third grade — that’s some 50,000 third graders across Tennessee in past years, and 77% of students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools.
The new law requires schools to identify students who are “at-risk of significant reading deficiency.”
Those are students who demonstrate “a lack of significant progress and/or skills significantly below grade-level based on universal screening data.”
But the new law doesn’t address students with learning disabilities, which is the cause of many if not most reading deficiencies.
Learning ‘deficiencies’ and ‘disabilities’
Kids who flunk third-grade reading assessments generally are kids with learning disabilities, either diagnosed or undiagnosed, studies show.
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
Mandatory retention laws generally exempt special education students. But receiving special education “requires a diagnosis, and a child’s underachievement may be significant before one can be made.”
As many as one in five children in the U.S. have learning, thinking and attention differences such as dyslexia or ADHD.
These differences, often labeled learning disabilities, are caused by variations in how the brain develops and how it processes information.
Learning disabilities are unrelated to intelligence. Kids with LDs just need strategies and supports to help them thrive, educators say.
But kids who learn and think differently often don’t get early or effective interventions. Many don’t get diagnosed at all.
Only one in 16 public school children qualify for special education services. A majority of them have their basic deficits in language and reading.
As many as six in 10 adults with significant literacy deficits in the U.S. live with an undiagnosed learning disability, according to the National Center for Learning Disabilities.
A large study found that half of young adults with diagnosed learning disabilities had been involved with the justice system.
Students with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be suspended, three times more likely to drop out of high school, and half as likely to enroll in a four-year college, and twice as likely to be jobless as adults.
Learning disabilities range in severity and may interfere with:
- oral language (listening, speaking, understanding)
- reading (phonetic knowledge, decoding, reading fluency, word recognition, comprehension)
- written language (spelling, writing fluency, written expression)
- mathematics (number sense, computation, math fact fluency, problem solving)
The Learning Disability Association of America lists seven specific types of learning disabilities and four disorders that are often classified as related.
They include:
Dyslexia
Dyslexia affects areas of the brain that process language. A child with dyslexia has difficulty identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words.
Most children with dyslexia can succeed in school with tutoring or a specialized education program. An estimated 70% to 80% of people with poor reading skills are likely to be dyslexic.
Attention Deficit Disorders
Symptoms including disorganization, impulsive behavior, poor time management and difficulty with focusing on tasks.
Inattention often leads to a diagnosis of ADHD, but it can also be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other learning disorders.
Dysgraphia
This affects a child’s ability to write legibly. They may have messy handwriting, hold pencils incorrectly and take much longer to write than most children.
Auditory, visual and language processing difficulties
This affects a child’s ability to pay attention, process sounds and learn. They have trouble following and remembering instructions.
Learning disabilities are neurologically based, and disproportionately impact children of poverty and trauma.
So do other factors that aren’t addressed by the new third-grade retention law.
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 1, 2, 3
Topics
third grade retention third graders Students with disabilities National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP learning disabilities ADHD National Center for Learning Disabilities dyslexia dysgraphiaIn 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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