Meanwhile, in urban districts, there will be equal concern that kids aren’t learning enough - that we haven’t erased the achievement gap that led to standardized testing in the first place. There will be hyped-up charter schools, movements to purge bad teachers, searches for some magic bullet to make schools work better.
The dichotomy is striking, and it highlights the trouble with our current efforts to equalize schools. We do need standards to guarantee success. But standardized tests are a cudgel that creates a whole new set of problems. Which means perhaps we should be working on a different goal entirely: a single, simple benchmark that would be a foundation for future success.
In fact, the experts have already found one: reading proficiency by third grade.
When MCAS scores come out, most people focus on 10th grade numbers, since those will determine who graduates and who doesn’t. But there’s a lot of reason to focus on the lower grades instead, and ample research that shows that poor reading in mid-elementary school predicts a host of future problems. According to a June 2010 report by the Boston-based advocacy group Strategies for Children, inadequate third-grade reading skills are linked to behavior troubles, depression, high dropout rates, teen pregnancy, and crime.
This is, in large part, a socioeconomic problem: In Massachusetts, 43 percent of third-graders from poor families are proficient in reading, compared with 74 percent of other students. The greatest troubles come in urban districts, where kids are less likely to grow up with good nutrition, hear broad vocabularies being used at home, or have parents with the time or wherewithal to read them lots of books.
But the achievement gap isn’t the only problem. As the report notes, nearly a third of students who aren’t from needy backgrounds aren’t proficient readers by third grade. And even for kids who hit every MCAS benchmark, there are signs that schools aren’t focused on reading quite enough. Colleges and universities have complained for years about a decline in students’ ability to think critically about things they read. At state colleges, more than a third of freshmen need remedial courses.
