Members of the Maryland State Board of Education were skeptical Tuesday of State Superintendent Carey Wright’s draft literacy policy that includes holding back third graders who can’t read on grade level.
Several members said they do not like retention policies seen in other states, including Mississippi, where Wright previously served as state superintendent. Many of the policy’s details have yet to be determined, including how student performance will be measured or what assessment will be used.
Those specifics might not become clear before the board votes on the policy as soon as September. Board members suggested implementing the policy in phases. It would start two school years after the board vote.
“I don’t know if I can be in support of this,” said board member Joan Mele-McCarthy at Tuesday’s meeting. “I need some more [details] to be in support of this, a lot more.”
The draft kindergarten-through-third grade literacy policy would require teachers to screen students three times a year for reading difficulties, notify parents of any risk of reading issues, offer more professional learning for teachers and incorporate more reading interventions for students who struggle to read.
Maryland’s Ready to Read Act requires school districts to screen students in kindergarten through second grade for reading difficulties and provide supplemental reading instruction. Districts can also hold back students in second through 12th grades. But the practices are inconsistent, said Tenette Smith, Maryland’s director of literacy programs, who previously worked with Wright in Mississippi.
Smith and Deann Collins, deputy state superintendent, said retention is a last resort for students reading severely below grade level. Retention also provides the additional time and intensive interventions students need to catch up with their peers, they said.
There are “good cause” exemptions for some students who would otherwise have to repeat the grade. Those include certain students with disabilities, students with less than two years of instruction in an English language development program, and students who have been retained in earlier grades and received intensive reading intervention for two or more years but still show a deficiency in reading. No student would be retained twice for the third grade.
Wright and her team asked for public feedback on the draft policy and received around 900 responses, Collins said Tuesday. The board’s August meeting will feature public comment on the draft policy.
“I want to be really clear with the board, this is just the beginning,” Wright said Tuesday. She and her staff will now work on revising the policy.
The draft policy is part of a larger effort to improve literacy instruction and boost student scores. In January, the board approved Wright’s resolution requiring that all school districts teach reading with the “science of reading” approach. The instructional method is backed by research and focuses on phonics, understanding syllables and comprehending the meaning of words in sentences, among other techniques.
Wright is credited with significantly raising the state’s literacy scores during her tenure in Mississippi, which began a year after the state passed a law requiring students to repeat the third grade if they don’t meet a threshold on a state reading exam.
In Mississippi, third grade retention was “a part of our plan,” Wright said. “We then planned for those kids. If they were retained, they didn’t just get another year in third grade. They got something very different in third grade” with intensive reading intervention and support.
Despite Wright’s and her team’s emphasis that the policy focuses more on interventions than retention, board members took aim in a 1 1/2-hour discussion at the associated costs, staffing needs and the quality of research that shows retention to be successful.
“This policy of retention would wreak havoc on [local school districts],” said Susan Getty, a board member, noting the state’s Blueprint for Maryland’s Future reform plan strained operating budgets. “I don’t think we have the space in this in the state of Maryland, and I do not believe we have the teachers in the state of Maryland to have [a mass of] students repeat the third grade.”
A 2023 Boston University research study that tracked a cohort of Mississippi students who were retained in third grade in 2014 found they had substantially higher English language arts scores in sixth grade and had no significant impact on other outcomes, including math scores, absences and special education identification.
But research has been mixed about the long-term effect of third grade retention on middle and high school students. Separate studies in 2021 and 2022 indicated that English language learners, Black, Latino and Native students are disproportionately affected by grade retention, and that repeating a grade negatively impacts students’ academic self-confidence and motivation.
“I would like to have copies of that research because … you can prove anything you want with statistics,” Mele-McCarthy said.
State education staff created a simulation of how many students would be retained if the threshold was based on a Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program standardized test score of 730 or below. That theoretical threshold would cause nearly 63,000 Maryland students who scored below proficient on the 2022 test to be held back. More than half of those students were Black and Hispanic/Latino, and more than 35% spoke English as a second language.
Since 2013, Maryland’s fourth grade reading proficiency significantly declined, dropping from third in the nation to 41st in 2022. About 31% of Maryland students scored proficient on the national test in 2022, and 69% of students did not reach proficiency, according to the state education department.
Scores on the statewide standardized test would not be the sole reason for holding a student back, Wright said.
The assessment that determines retention won’t be the MCAP and probably wouldn’t be a standardized test. Rather, it could be an assessment that’s worked into a class reading curriculum. Wright created an accountability and assessment task force to examine whether the MCAP and state accountability system, called the Maryland Report Card, need to be changed.
Board members, however, praised some parts of the draft policy, such as parent involvement. Parents would be notified within two weeks if their child is having trouble reading. Many parents aren’t aware their child is reading below grade level before it’s too late, members said.
Along with board members, education associations have expressed concern over the retention policy.
In a letter, the Public School Superintendents’ Association of Maryland and Maryland Association of Boards of Education said the policy has numerous positive steps toward enhancing literacy, such as focusing on the science of reading and adding more interventions.
But overburdened teachers might struggle to provide individualized attention that retained students need, they wrote, and it’s hard to schedule interventions that don’t interfere with class time. Professional development needed to train teachers in the science of reading can be very expensive, they said, and school districts just went through one of the most difficult budget seasons in recent years.
In May, the state education department received a four-year, $6.8 million grant that will allow teachers to take courses on the science of reading.
“As the chief executives of our school systems, we must consider the tremendous operational impacts of this policy,” PSSAM President Andraé Townsel and MABE President Michelle Corkadel wrote in the joint letter. “The new financial obligations of this proposed policy would seriously compound an already stressful and dire fiscal situation in many school systems.”
