2015/05/07 – Some 5,700 Mississippi elementary school students risk repeating the third grade next year after scoring minimal on last month’s statewide reading assessment.

The Mississippi Department of Education released statewide test results at a Board of Education meeting Thursday morning. Students must have scored a 926 or above to demonstrate they can read at or above grade level and, thus, advance to the fourth grade.

Fifteen percent of the roughly 38,000 third graders who took the test scored below that mark, said Chris Domaleski, chairman of the Mississippi National Technical Advisory Committee.

They will repeat the third grade unless they pass the test when it’s re-administered later this month and again this summer, or unless they meet one of the several “good cause exemptions” allowed by the state’s new Mississippi Literacy-Based Promotion Act.

Legislators passed the act in 2013 to curb the practice of social promotion – where children who cannot read or write advance to higher grades simply to keep pace with their peer group. It was championed by Gov. Phil Bryant and modeled on similar programs implemented in states like Florida and North Carolina.

But educators disagree on whether retaining children actually benefits them. Research on the subject has yielded mixed results, Domaleski said.

“I abhor the concept,” said O. Wayne Gann, Board of Education member. “It’s not in the best interest of children.”

Source: The Clarion-Ledger 

Emily Le Coz