This story originally appeared in the Aug. 23, 2024 edition of the LINK Reader.
In talks with education professionals, the end of third grade is often treated as the linchpin for future student success, not just academically but economically in the long term. One skill in particular stands out as foundational: literacy.
“Literacy is really the key to unlocking other content areas” said Dr. Ginni Fair, former middle school English teacher and current dean of Northern Kentucky University’s College of Education, “That’s why it’s so critical. That’s a skill that’s a lifelong learning skill.”
One often-cited report comes from the legacy children’s nonprofit, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which was published first in 2010 and then updated in 2013. Pulling from national assessment data, the original version of the report “drew a link between failure to read proficiently by the end of third grade, ongoing academic difficulties in school, failure to graduate from high school on time and chances of succeeding economically later in life — including individuals’ ability to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty and the country’s ability to ensure global competitiveness, general productivity and national security.”
So how are our kids doing?
Every year, the U.S. Department of Education assesses a sample of students in certain grades to track their academic performance at key points in their education. Called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes referred to as the nation’s report card, it can serve as a window into the broad academic progress of American students, both at the national and state levels. It’s the main data source the foundation’s report pulled from.
One thing you’ll notice if you look at recent reading assessment data for students who’ve finished third grade–everything’s going down.
Statements from the National Center for Education Statistics, which is responsible for analyzing the data gathered from the assessments, suggest the decline coincides with school closures related to the pandemic. Similar declines have occurred in other subject areas.
The most recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show Kentucky reading scores at the beginning of fourth grade as roughly in-line with national averages and following national trends downward. The trend persists into students’ eighth grade scores.
There are limitations to the insights one can draw from assessment data. Methodologies can differ between geographic areas and organizations. What’s more–as in Kentucky’s case–assessment standards can change at regular intervals, which can be problematic for anyone trying to make comparisons across time.
Even with these caveats, reading is widely held to be the wellspring from which student abilities in other subject areas–social studies, science, even math–flows. If a student struggles to read, they’re likely to struggle with everything else.
In the face of this quandary, Kentucky passed Senate Bill 9 in 2022. Also called the Read to Succeed Act, the bill set out to ensure “all children learn to read well before exiting grade three (3) and that all middle and high school students have the skills necessary to read complex materials in specific core subjects and comprehend and constructively apply the information.” To that end, it mandates what it describes as a structured approach to reading instruction with a heavy focus on “evidence-based reading.”
But what does all of this mean? Where does NKY stand? And how does it matter for students and their families?
Literacy Instruction in Kentucky
There are a handful of reasons why educators hold third grade as such an important benchmark. For one, children’s brain development is ripe for language acquisition leading up to and around that time period. Moreover, third and fourth grades are often times when students begin moving around between classrooms, when they’re asked to act more independently as students. Lastly, school texts tend to become more difficult during this time, moving up from short instructional texts to more complex forms of writing, including both book-length fiction as well as longer form texts in social studies and science (and don’t forget the bane of many students’ existence–math word problems).
All of this overlaps in such a way that if a student doesn’t have a solid reading foundation by the end of third grade, it’s going to be much harder to catch up.
“As a state, the Commonwealth has really become a lot more intentional systemically around the importance of literacy, especially at the early primary level, so those beginning readers, K-3,” said Shawna Harney, the chief academic officer with Kenton County School District.
Kenton County School District is the second-largest district in the region in terms of number of students after Boone County School District. It scored in the second highest category for elementary school reading and math in the states accountability system in 2023, an improvement from the previous year’s score. Middle and high school assessments did not see the same improvement, instead maintaining their high and medium rankings, respectively.
The district was one of three in Kentucky to speak before the Kentucky Department of Education’s inaugural “Read to Succeed” conference in June, where Harney shared with the department what they were doing to improve student literacy throughout the district.
Harney described the more structured approach that characterizes literacy instruction at Kenton County Schools after SB 9.
The curriculum now pulls more heavily upon what is now called the science of reading. The terminology isn’t new, and it’s not a specific program but rather a set of general practices that focuses heavily on the mastering of discrete skills early in a student’s education in preparation for more complex reading down the line. As laid out in the statute, these skills are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension.
The phonetic model of reading instruction, which emphasizes teaching children how to break down words into component characters and sounds–’sound it out,’ you might remember your own teacher saying–is in contrast to another model of instruction often called the whole language model.
Enter the reading wars
Under whole language instruction, reading instruction is focused less on the mastery of discrete skills and more on learning to discern meaning from a text using context clues, quick identification of common recurring characters in words and the cultivation of a classroom environment where books are widely available and accessible.
There are numerous programs based on both a phonetic approach and a whole-language approach (and gradations between), but conflict between the two theoretical frameworks is something that has characterized reading instruction for some time, most recently in the late nineties and early 2000s. The whole language approach has fallen out of favor these days–Kentucky is one of several states in recent years that have passed laws mandating greater emphasis on a phonetic education–although not all elements of the whole language model have completely disappeared.
“I don’t know that the reading wars ever stopped,” Fair said.
Both Fair and Harney point to some shortcomings when it comes to using a purely whole-language approach.
“Giving kids strategies, such as [telling kids to] ‘look at the pictures in a book’ and [asking] ‘what do you think that might mean?’ there is value in that, certainly, to use context clues,” Harney said, “but kids have to understand how to pronounce and to phonetically break down a word to be able to read and make meaning of what those words are when they put them together.”
“That was the problem with whole language; there wasn’t enough direct instruction,” Fair said, with some caveats.
For one thing, Fair said, phonetic instruction can be inadequate for some students with learning disabilities or neurodivergence, such as dyslexia, so alternative methods may be warranted in those cases.
Fair also admits that it’s possible for the pendulum to swing too far in the opposite direction, toward the phonetic model. With its emphasis on more direct instruction and the short, expository texts it relies upon, this can confound students’ ability to engage with longer, full-length texts, like novels. She also argues that it can undercut students’ enjoyment of reading.
“[Students have] lost their desire to read because there’s been such an emphasis on this very structured close reading,” Fair said. “I think, as a profession–not in Kentucky in an isolated way, but as a profession broadly–we don’t take away from these pendulums the good pieces; we just completely redesign. We just keep redoing.”
Moreover, Fair fears that the renewed fervor around the science of reading could lead to some misconceptions, especially among leaders, and, as such, it’s important to remember that learning to read well is a lifelong process.
“I fear that with the science of reading, there’s this misunderstanding that in the early grades you teach kids to read, students learn to read and then in the later grades, they read to learn, which is not true,” Fair said. “You’re teaching students to read all the way through.”
What schools, parents can do
Beginning in grade 3, students at Kentucky public schools are given mandatory assessments in various subject areas. The test is based on state standards. The state also instituted a new school accountability system in the 2021-222 school year aimed at tracking changes in districts over time.
Rhonda Sims, associate commissioner in the Kentucky Department of Education’s Office of Assessment and Accountability, admits that there are some holes in the most recent testing data provided by the state. For one, the state began tweaking its accountability system around the onset of the pandemic. This was followed by a year of no testing and then a year of partial testing. As a result, she said side-by-side comparisons in the state’s new “change” measure may not yet be the best barometer for tracking progress.
She points out, however, that many districts also give smaller formative assessments to internally track a student’s progress through a given school year, and these, along with regular communication with a child’s teacher, are “very important” and arguably more useful for parents looking to track a student’s progress.
For districts, Harney said communication and coordination among school staff is key. Kenton County uses an in-house instructional database to which any teacher has access to ensure data is shared among the district’s teachers. That’s especially important for tracking the progress of students who do not take the state assessments.
The district has also introduced a new instructional position called a literacy leader, a teacher recognized by principals as exceptionally good at teaching reading. Literacy leaders take extra training and serve as advisers to their peers and building staff.
Finally, Fair points out that instructional method is only one aspect of a student’s education and only one factor in their performance.
“There are so many external factors that influence students’ learning,” Fair said.
These factors include things like homelessness, pre-kindergarten readiness and varying cultural expectations around schools. As such, she said, communities need to work together to solve collective issues.
“We’ve just reached a point where we as an educational community have to acknowledge that simple fixes aren’t available, but community efforts and well prepared and valued educators are the right step in the right direction,” Fair said.