When the Nation’s Report Card for grade-school math and reading was released recently, the adjectives describing the overall lack of upward momentum in reading scores were: lackluster, flat, stagnant and stalled. It’s too bad there aren’t better words to depict the students’ struggle to keep up in the face of difficult circumstances. Even so, the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that fourth- and eighth-grade students posted their highest scores in math since 1990. Reading was a different story. Only one-third of all students demonstrated proficient, or higher, levels in reading. There were some small achievements, however.
Overall, the ability of fourth-graders to read informational text and literature was unchanged from 2009, the last time reading was assessed. Notable, though, is that when broken out into groups that were either not eligible for free lunch or were eligible for reduced or free lunch, the fourth-graders scored two hard-won points higher than in 2009. The eighth-graders also scored one to two points higher this year than in 2009, with lower-performing, low-income, and racial and ethnic group students making slightly greater gains overall since 1992. But even these tiny gains are worth celebrating since getting students to read well is such a major struggle involving many factors both at home and in the classroom.
First, we know that the educational attainment level of public school students’ parents and their assistance in ensuring their kids’ academic success play the biggest roles. But not all well-educated parents spend time reading to or with their young children or consistently model reading for pleasure at home.
Hodgepodge of programs
While math is usually accessible to most parents at the elementary grade level, countless parents have difficulty helping their students with reading-based tasks — a challenge compounded by the erratic way in which students from homes where more than one language is spoken are treated when it comes to English-language instruction. This past February, a national network of more than 250 private and public funding organizations called Grantmakers for Education released “Investing in Our Next Generation,” a report noting that more than one in 10 pre-kindergarten to 12th-grade students in the U.S. — more than 5.3 million — are classified as English Language Learners.