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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
The Tennessee State Board of Education has finally defined the “adequate growth” needed to determine whether fourth graders are held back under the state’s reading retention law.
The third grade reading law was originally passed in 2021 but was not put into place until 2023. The law was part of a push by lawmakers to address learning loss attributed to school disruptions during the pandemic.
As a result of the reading law, more than 12,000 third graders across the state opted for year-long tutoring during the fourth grade after not testing proficient on the Language Arts portion of the state’s TCAP test. Only about 900 students were retained in the third grade.
Of those students who chose to take advantage of tutoring in the fourth grade, it is estimated that about half of those will face retention again at the end of this school year. In order to pass to the fifth grade, they must show “adequate growth.”
It has taken months of conversation for the state BOE to release a definition of “adequate growth.”
The formula provided by the state for determining whether or not a student has shown enough growth to move on allows for individualized goals for each student. That formula factors in the student’s ELA score on the TCAP test and their predicted probability for a score of “proficient” on the test.
In testimony before the Senate Education Committee, executive director of the state BOE Sara Morrison said, “It is complicated; it is not something that is easy to explain.”
Districts will be responsible for applying the formula to each student and contacting parents regarding the results.
Lawmakers have hinted at rolling out changes to the state reading law, but to date, no additional legislation has been discussed.
State Senator Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City-District 3) and State Representative Chris Hurt (R-Halls-District 82) introduced a bill that would allow teachers, administrators, and parents to use several different measures in addition to TCAP scores to decide whether a student should be retained or not.
