Don’t merely delay reading holdback law, scrap it and find something smarter - AL.com

This is an opinion column.

It sounded like a good idea at the time. Back in 2019. At least to some.

We had a problem, Alabama. A huge, embarrassing problem: Our kids couldn’t read.

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Not like they should. Not at grade level. Not by that critical third-grade year when, as my colleague Ruth Serven Smith reports, teaching in most schools shifts from “learning to read” to “reading to learn”.

If they can’t read, well, the implications for that—for them and us—are stomach-churning sick. There wasn’t a shred of disagreement on that.

We had to do something. We had to fix it, dang it.

The solution, conceived by our erudite lawmakers? Punish the kids. Penalize the most powerless ones in this quagmire we call education in Alabama: Among the littlest kids; third graders.

Hold them back, dang it, if they’re not reading on grade level. Legislators slammed a haughty name on the bill—calling it the Alabama Literacy Act—and set it to launch in 2021-22. First-graders, basically, were on the clock.

It seemed like a good idea at the time—at least to some—because well, Mississippi was doing it. (Let those words marinate for a few moments.) With some success. Since launching its read-or-else program (my term, not theirs) reading scores rose slightly, hold-back rates declined.

I had some misgivings about the punitive nation of the act, about holding, what, 7- and 8-year-olds thusly accountable when er’body else—teachers and educators—got to skate. But, yes, we had to do something.

We had to fix it, and, dang it, the act was our plan.

That was before we learned the true depth of our reading problem. Before we learned in late 2019 that reading scores for our fourth and eighth graders, measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, were 49th in the nation. Woeful by even our own historically woeful standard.

That was before COVID-19, of course. Before our kids—all of us, but especially our kids—endured a seismic experience that will define forever their lives. Before they sat at home for more than a year. Before they stared at faces on a laptop for more than a year.

Before they missed—the itty-bitty ones—coloring and screaming and playing with other itty-bitty ones. Before they missed a year out of the home. A year with teachers. A year learning to be.

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It took a while, too long, but Gov. Kay Ivey appears to have finally acknowledged that fixing this won’t be easy. Or fast. And it certainly won’t be fixed by holding back our itty-bitty ones—at least not now.

She, in essence, vetoed her own veto last week, announcing she’ll ask state lawmakers to delay implementing the holdback (she cutely calls it the “promotion” provision) for one year. In March she rejected a bill sponsored by Sen. Roger Smitherman and passed by state lawmakers—23 to 9 in the Senate, 68-27 in the House—to delay the holdback two years.

Eight months later…

“We need the spring 2022 data to further validate the ‘cut score’ before we implement the promotion policy,” she told the state Board of Education, which she chairs, on Wednesday.

Smitherman says he had no idea Ivey was going to pitch for a one-year delay, which would be addressed by lawmakers during their next session. “I was surprised,” he told me. “It would have been nice to contact the [bill’s] sponsor for input. That was not the case. It should have been something we work on together. That’s what I want to do more than anything.”

He still believes, just as state lawmakers affirmed, the right delay is two years.

“The data is there,” he said. “It was indisputable. Everybody saw it but the executive branch. Now they see it. This isn’t about politics. It was never about politics with me. Parents were concerned. Teachers were. Superintendents were concerned. That was my motivation.”

One good thing emerged from the holdback law: It lit a fire. It sparked us to finally, after too many years of shoulder-shrugging neglect, pour more resources into teaching and seek new, bolder strategies to help our kids read.

School districts statewide variously implemented extra learning sessions during summers and other breaks, launched after-school tutoring, hired specialized reading paraprofessionals to support teachers, and embraced reading programs that are working in other parts of the nation.

“We will be doubling down on providing the support needed to implement the Alabama Literacy Act,” Ivey said last week.

Great. Here’s another thought: Scrap the act. Scrap it and triple down on the support, on pouring into our students, especially our itty-bitty ones.

Scrap it and start over—while being uber intentional about closing the copious racial and socioeconomic gaps, the educational inequities, we ignored for generations.

Scrap it and continue seeking successful models elsewhere, then importing them into our classroom. Models less punitive and more purposeful.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. There must be better ones now.

Roy S. Johnson is a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of 2021 Edward R. Morrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable”, co-hosted with John Archibald. His column appears in The Birmingham News and AL.com, as well as the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Press-Register. Reach him at [email protected], follow him at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj.

source: https://www.al.com/education/2021/11/dont-merely-delay-reading-holdback-law-scrap-it-and-find-something-smarter.html

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