Take a guess: What is the single most important year of an
individual’s academic career? The answer isn’t junior year of high
school, or senior year of college. It’s third grade.
What makes success in third grade so significant? It’s the year that
students move from learning to read — decoding words using their
knowledge of the alphabet — to reading to learn. The books children are
expected to master are no longer simple primers but fact-filled texts on
the solar system, Native Americans, the Civil War. Children who haven’t
made the leap to fast, fluent reading begin at this moment to fall
behind, and for most of them the gap will continue to grow. So third
grade constitutes a critical transition — a “pivot point,” in the words
of Donald J. Hernandez, a professor of sociology at CUNY–Hunter College.
A study Hernandez
conducted, released last year by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, found
that third-graders who lack proficiency in reading are four times more
likely to become high school dropouts.
(MORE: Paul: Born to be Bright: Is There a Gene For Learning?)
Too often the story unfolds this way: struggles in third grade lead
to the “fourth-grade slump,” as the reading-to-learn model comes to
dominate instruction. While their more skilled classmates are amassing
knowledge and learning new words from context, poor readers may begin to
avoid reading out of frustration. A vicious cycle sets in: school
assignments increasingly require background knowledge and familiarity
with “book words” (literary, abstract and technical terms)— competencies
that are themselves acquired through reading. Meanwhile, classes in
science, social studies, history and even math come to rely more and
more on textual analysis, so that struggling readers begin to fall
behind in these subjects as well.
(MORE: Paul: What Distinguishes A Super School From The Rest)
In operation here is what researchers call the “Matthew effect,”
after the Bible verse found in the Gospel of Matthew: “For whosoever
hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but
whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.” In
other words, the academically rich get richer and the poor get poorer,
as small differences in learning ability grow into large ones. But the
Matthew effect has an important upside: well-timed interventions can
reverse its direction, turning a vicious cycle into a virtuous one.
Recognizing the importance of this juncture, some states have been
taking a hard line: third-graders who aren’t reading at grade level
don’t get promoted to fourth grade. “Mandatory retention” bills have
already passed in Arizona, Florida, Indiana and Oklahoma, and are being
considered in Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico and Tennessee. But many
education researchers say holding kids back isn’t the answer. The ideal
alternative: teachers and parents would collaborate on the creation of
an individualized learning plan for each third-grader who needs help
with reading — a plan that might involve specialized instruction,
tutoring or summer school. Most important is taking action, researchers
say, and not assuming that reading problems will work themselves out.
(MORE: Andrew J. Rotherham: What Do We Do About Poor Science Scores? Take Kids Outside)
It might seem scary that a single school year can foretell so much of
a student’s future. But maybe we should feel grateful instead — that
research has given us a golden opportunity to both build on what has
already been accomplished or turn kids’ academic lives around.
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