New literacy policy- crazy or what?

 Crazy is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result.

 

The Maryland State Department of Education has backed down a bit on its requirement that all students must be competent readers by the end of grade 3 or be retained until they are. Competence in reading is defined as a score of 375 on the MCAP test.   There was significant push back from the State Board of Education and the public.

Now there is a compromise.  Parents will have gained the right to challenge a school district’s decision to retain a poor reading third grader.  Districts must inform parents within 15 days from the time the decision to retain a 3^rd grader has been made.  BUT, parents have the option to insist that their child move onto 4^th grade as long as they agree to use additional help from the school district such as summer school or before or after school tutoring that happens outside of the school day.   The State Board will decide at its September meeting on whether or not it will approve the compromise plan.

Maryland has developed a 3^rd grade English test called the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program or MCAP.  It is administered near the end of the school year.  A student who scores 375 or above is considered proficient.  Starting in the 2025-26 school year, districts would need to screen children three times for reading proficiency.  They will also be screened once a year for dyslexia beginning in kindergarten.  That’s a WHOLE lot of testing going on and those tests do not include all of the other academic testing.  According to the plan the retention policy would go into effect at the end of the 2026-2027 school year.  

The instructional portion of the policy will go into effect as soon as the State Board approves the plan as early as its September meeting.  Under the new instructional policy, ALL reading instruction will be based on what is being called the Science of Reading, which is essentially a phonics-based approach to reading instruction which teaches students the sounds of letters and how they come together to make words.  Don’t let it bother you that English is one of the LEAST phonetically regular languages.  The policy bans reading instruction that has kids guess words based on sentence context. But WAIT, how do adults figure decode words they don’t know- or right by the context of the sentence. Hmmm, so is that word read or read?  We can't use the context of the sentence right?  So teachers are no longer allowed to teach this mature reading habit.

And just in case, kids are still not scoring 375 on the MCAP in the 4^th grade they will be put on an “intensive reading program”.   Crazy is continuing to do the same thing and expect a different result.  Could it be that the so-called science of reading doesn’t work for some kids?