Education Week - May 13, 2015 - S19

Building Literacy Skills > www.edweek.org/go/buildingliteracy | S19
EDUCATION WEEK MAY 13, 2015
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showed academic gains and no
social-emotional problems after
being held back.
Pinning Down Cause
Yet critics and the authors themselves
noted there is no way to
separate the value of retaining
students from the value of other
supports given in Florida and New
York City.
"When I look at those studies,
there's no question that kids who
are being retained are making
gains, but you are stuck saying,
'Yeah, but isn't it what you did with
that extra time?' " Mr. Shanahan
said. "[The researchers] don't have
any data from a group that just
got retained; they all got retained
within that system."
Separately, rand researchers
found in a research analysis that
all the retention initiatives that
improved student achievement included
early assessments and significant,
intensive interventions for
the students who were retained.
"I'm a big fan of increasing the
amount of instruction, but it's not
really an [intervention], it's the
measure of the amount" of the intervention,
Mr. Shanahan said.
Even among states that require
struggling readers to repeat 3rd
grade, there's no consensus on what
happens to them on their second try.
A majority of states requiring
retention allow students to be promoted
if they participate in summer
school, the Education Commission
of the States found in a 2014
study, but district and state budget
cuts have changed programs or
limited access to some programs
since 2008.
Seven states require students
who are repeating 3rd grade to
be assigned to a different teacher
from the one they had their first
time through. A majority of states
also call for retained students to receive
supplemental instruction in
or after school, but those programs
can differ significantly from one
district to another.
Aligning Interventions
Linda M. Sullivan-Dudzic, the
director of elementary and special
programs for the 5,000-student
Bremerton district in Washington,
recalled following one retained 3rd
grader for a day to get a sense of
his interventions.
"That little guy went to seven different
people doing seven different
things. All of them were well intentioned,
but seven different things
in one day-that's where you have
to watch out," she said. "Your interventions
have to be aligned with
what you are teaching, or you are
just confusing students who are already
struggling."
Third grade reading policies notwithstanding,
the number of K-12
students being retained may have
peaked. A 2014 analysis in Educational
Researcher found that the
retention rate across all 50 states
fell from 2.9 percent in the 2004-05
school year to 1.5 percent in the 200910
school year, with declines across
the board.
However, these numbers do not
include more recent retentions following
the tougher common-core
reading tests that were rolled out
since 2010.
One possible reason for the discrepancy
between states' steppedup
actions and actual retention
rates: Educators may be working
hard to help students avoid retention.
For example, while Washington
state requires schools to retain
most 3rd graders who fail a statewide
reading exam, Ms. SullivanDudzic
said she works to help parents
understand their children's
reading difficulties and support
them before retentions happen.
Bremerton, on Puget Sound,
has six high-poverty elementary
schools-with 57 percent to 83 percent
of students receiving free or
reduced-price meals-and in 2001,
the state reported that only 4 percent
of district kindergartners entered
knowing the alphabet.
Bremerton Program
To avoid leaving at-risk readers
with a "potpourri of things to plug
holes" in reading skills, Ms. SullivanDudzic
said the district streamlined
its reading interventions this year.
Every 3rd grader who scores
"below basic" in reading a month
after school starts gets an additional
reading session each day
with a reading specialist targeted
to a weak area, such as phonics or
fluency. In January, teachers meet
with the parents of students who
are still struggling to plan activities
and supports at home and in school.
A morning tutorial, in which students
get an additional 45-minute
session four to five days a week,
has proved particularly popular
with the district's rising homelessstudent
population.
"That's been a really nice intervention
for our students in crisis,"
Ms. Sullivan-Dudzic said. "They
get to come early and get breakfast
and a little additional practice with
a certified reading teacher."
Even those who fail the final reading
test later in the spring can be
promoted if they participate in an
intensive summer school program.
"We don't just want to do this because
it's the law; we want to help
all our kids who are struggling,"
she said.
In the end, politics may play as
big a role as pedagogy in the continued
use of retention as a reading
intervention.
Florida was one of the earliest
states to adopt 3rd grade reading
as a gatekeeper, as part of thengovernor
and current Republican
presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's
statewide reading initiative. Mr.
Bush and the Foundation for Excellence
in Education, the nonprofit
group he launched, were active in
promoting retention laws in other
states, and reading remains part of
his platform as he seeks his party's
presidential nomination.
The pressure for students to master
literacy in the early grades is
likely to increase as common standards
increase the rigor of early
grades, said Barbara T. Bowman, a
child-development professor and a
co-founder of the Erikson Institute,
a Chicago-based education research
center.
That may reduce the impetus to
retain struggling readers, if significantly
more students failed the
more-challenging 3rd grade English/language
arts tests.
A separate analysis by the Education
Commission of the States
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calculated that nationally, it costs
an average of more than $10,000
to retain one student. If, for example,
districts held back all the
roughly 10,000 3rd graders who
failed the reading portion of the
Florida state tests in 2014, taxpayers
would be on the hook for
another $100 million. ■
Coverage of the implementation of
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is supported in part by a grant from
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Education Week retains sole editorial
control over the content of this coverage.
The INSIDE SCHOOL RESEARCH blog tracks news
and trends on this issue. www.edweek.org/
go/insideschoolresearch
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Education Week - May 13, 2015

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