School officials raise concerns about third-grade retention

Local school officials understand the reasons for retaining third-graders who aren’t proficient in reading. Their main concerns lie with how it’s going to be funded, and what happens if one year of retention isn’t enough to solve the problem.

House Bill 41, introduced by Monica Youngblood requires screening of students in kindergarten through third grade for reading skills, intervention for students who aren’t proficient and retention for third-graders if they still don’t reach proficiency.

The measure is expected to go on the House floor Wednesday morning.

Screenings would begin in the 2015-16 school year, and mandatory retention for non-proficient students would start in the 2016-17 school year. The bill would provide exceptions for children who score in the top half of a state-approved assessment, English language learners with proficiency in their first language and disabled students with individual education programs, and a student could only be retained one time.

Portales Schools Superintendent Johnnie Cain said there is some concern about eliminating an aspect of local control. Retaining a student is a choice recommended by a school district, with parents having one right of refusal. House Bill 41, Cain said, would take that choice out of the hands of both parties.

But his biggest issue is how to pay for it.

“I think the real concern is funding,” Cain said. “I’ve read that bill, and as I’ve looked at it, standards are pretty low for what they call proficient. I don’t think it hurts us that way. My problem is if there are extra interventions or summertime interventions, how are we going to fund that?”

The Public Education Department has not provided the Legislative Finance Committee with an estimate of potential costs or saving, or the number of children that could be impacted by the policy.

But proponents of the measure have noted social promotion can lead to untold costs associated with an uneducated populace.

“Traditionally students learn to read in kindergarten through third grade so they can read to learn in the upper grades,” according to the LFC’s fiscal impact report. “Early reading proficiency is a leading indicator of future academic success. A child who cannot read by the fourth grade will continue to fall behind their peers and, without remediation, academic proficiency will continue to decline as reading improvement changes most dramatically in the early years.”

Attempts to contact area legislators were unsuccessful.

Clovis Schools Superintendent Jody Balch sees the problem as a double-edged sword.

“I don’t believe kids should be promoted who can’t read at grade level,” Balch said. “But if you retain them and they can’t be held back (again), what do you do the next year? I don’t know what the answer is if they’re held back and they continue to not read at grade level.”

Critics of the measure have noted that tying retention to a specific grade will create a bottleneck. When Florida started a similar program in 2002-03, 14 percent of its third-grade students were not promoted to fourth grade. In the 2013-14 academic year, 24.3 percent of New Mexico third-graders tested at the lowest level, “beginning steps,” of the Standards Based Assessment. Another 23.9 percent tested as “nearing proficient,” while the remaining 51.8 percent tested as proficient or reading at a higher grade level.

Assuming a school had 100 children in each grade level, and the state required retaining the “beginning steps” students, the second year of the retention program would result in 125 third-graders and 75 fourth-graders.

“You could have a large number of third-grade teachers, which is an added expense,” Balch said. “You might not need as many fourth-grade teachers initially, but you would eventually, because you’ve got a lot of third-grade students coming the following year.”

Clovis, which operates under a neighborhood school system, would potentially have staffing issues to resolve at a dozen elementary school campuses. Portales’ changes on any third-grade retention policy would be limited to Valencia Elementary, which serves all of the district’s third- and fourth-grade students.

Cain did note that early intervention is always the goal, regardless of legislation.

“We’ve already got programs in place where we have a transition,” Cain said. “We try to identify kids in kindergarten. We have a pretty good success rate with that.”

No matter what the legislation is, though, Balch noted that the Legislature and the school district are only part of the equation.

“Education’s got to be a two-way street,” Balch said. “Education’s got to come from the home. If they’re not being read to, their success rate is going to diminish.”