LITTLE ROCK — Thousands of third graders are at risk of retention due to reading insufficiency, as revealed in a House and Senate Education Committee meeting Tuesday.
The new requirement for third graders to pass a certain reading level before moving on to the 4th grade is a part of the LEARNS Act.
“But the child’s suffering because the adults aren’t getting them the support they need, and I will never say, ever, say ever that because you’re a poor kid from the delta that you should have access to unqualified teachers,” Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva says.
Oliva pushed back on concerns that third graders in rural schools won’t meet the reading requirement threshold due to what some see as a lack of resources.
In Tuesday’s meeting, Oliva outlines the state’s redesigned standardized exam, known as ATLAS, tailored to Arkansas’ unique needs-not federal requirements-and created by Arkansas educators.
The scoring system ranges from one to four, one representing limited skills and four representing advanced understanding.
Starting this academic year, third graders who score below a two at the end of the year are at risk of being held back and not advancing to the fourth grade.
“It’s not just an automatic retention, it’s a screener,” Oliva says,
The screener is designed for families and educators to come up with an improvement plan, which could just mean summer school, but it could also mean retention.
There are, however, there are exemptions, including students with disabilities.
In Tuesday’s meeting, the number raising the most eyebrows was the large sum of students, 10,000, who would’ve been at risk of retention if this law had been exacted last year.
“I know the first thing people are going to say is you can’t retain that many kids. I’m going to tell you right now publicly, we do not intend to add student parking to middle school. Right? Like that’s not the goal of third grade promotion,” Oliva says.
We want all children reading so that we can have all adults reading and participating in our community and elevating Arkansas even more,” Brittney Mills, Executive Director of Reading Services of Arkansas, says.
The Arkansas Education association weighs in with persistent concerns about funding.
A big thing that I’m concerned about is a lot of these students are our English language learners, and as we see at a national level, a lot of that funding is being cut right now,” April Reisma, President of the Arkansas Education Association, says.
All parents should have access to their child’s ATLAS account so they can monitor their progress from the beginning, middle, to the end of third grade.
Educators say it’s wise to act on it early at home instead of waiting until the very end of the year.
Oliva says high impact tutoring, literacy coaches, and extensive support are now being provided in Arkansas schools.
