Questioning 3rd-grade retention

A rising number of states bar promotion for students who don't read proficiently by 3rd grade, yet new research questions retention's effectiveness, as well as the timing of reading development itself, writes Sarah Sparks for Education Week. The theorized cognitive shift from "learning to read" in 3rd grade to "reading to learn" in 4th grade may not be as clear-cut as traditionally thought. "Not being able to decode is different from phonological fluency, which is different from not understanding what words mean," says Shane Jimerson of the University of California, Santa Barbara. "Just repeating a grade is not going to magically solve those problems, and it adds the consequences psychologically of being left behind." The Common Core State Standards call for students to begin "reading to learn" -- drawing information from text -- as early as kindergarten, despite no clear break between learning to read and reading to learn. And the recommended timing of interventions is questioned, too. "There isn't this magic age that, if you don't catch a kid by that age, you lose them forever," says Timothy Shanahan of the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Just because you catch a 7-year-old up and get him to his class average, that's terrific, but that doesn't guarantee his future, either. What you tend to see is [retained students] fall back over time." More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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