Senate kills bill to retain third-graders

Santa Fe New Mexican

A state Senate committee on Wednesday night defeated the last of Gov. Susana Martinez's bills to hold back certain third-graders who score in the bottom tier on standardized reading tests.

In another in a series of party-line decisions, the Public Affairs Committee voted 4-1 to table the bill, effectively killing it for at least another year. Democrats opposed the measure, saying that flunking students en masse would only lead to more students failing in life.

"I can't support a bill that's going to harm children," said Sen. Mimi Stewart, D-Albuquerque, a retired teacher. "... There's nothing magical about repeating a grade. The magic comes when you get intervention," such as summer school and extra help during the regular academic year.

The committee's vote surprised no one. A month ago, it tabled a similar bill by Sen. Gay Kernan, R-Hobbs.

The first vote signaled that it would not support Martinez's call for a law that would require schools to hold back some third-graders without parents or teachers having a say in the decision.

Current state law allows for retention of students, though parents are involved in those decisions. Parents also have one-time veto power over a school staff if they believe their child should not be held back.

Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, sponsored the bill that the committee rejected Wednesday. She got it through the Republican-controlled House of Representatives without difficulty but knew that convincing the Senate would be a harder job.

Youngblood said the existing system does not work. Unprepared students are passed on to the next grade, she said. Worse still, Youngblood said, 1 in 3 adults in New Mexico cannot read at a sixth-grade level. Youngblood said illiteracy would only worsen without her bill for holding back third-graders.

"I do think there has to be a line in the sand," she said.

The committee chairman, Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, questioned Youngblood's statistics about adult literacy. In a state of about 2 million, 1 in 3 adults reading at a sixth-grade level would translate to more than half a million people, he said.

Youngblood also said she believes in her bill because her niece was held back in kindergarten and has blossomed into a confident, capable fourth-grader. Making a child repeat a grade should be regarded as helpful, not a social stigma, she said.

Martinez has said for four years that she wants to end the practice of passing along third-graders who don't read at grade level. But the bills she supported contained numerous exceptions.

Disabled students, those learning English as a second language and children who scored at the 50th percentile on an alternate test were among them.

This prompted the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty to say the bills Martinez favored would still pass along most struggling readers, failing only those who lacked an advocate.

Sen. Jacob Candelaria, D-Albuquerque, told Youngblood that research overwhelmingly shows that forced retention of students does not work.

"The only conversation we've had on reading is predicated on retention," he said. "If we're really interested in compromise, let's take mandatory retention off the table."

An analysis of the retention bill by the legislative staff says that, in the 2013-14 school year, 25,462 third-graders took reading tests. More than 24 percent, or 6,187 students, were at "beginning steps," the lowest level. But many of them would have been passed along because of the bill's exemptions.

Another 23.9 percent, or 6,085 third-graders, also were not proficient readers. Under the bill, they would have been promoted to fourth grade anyway because they are "nearing proficiency."

Based solely on the standardized test scores, the bill's expectation was that they would swim, not sink, in a higher grade.