For the past few years in Michigan, if you are in the third grade but not reading at a third-grade level, you can be held back. But thanks to a State Legislature controlled by Democrats, that will soon change.
Last month, the Michigan State Senate Committee voted to advance legislation that would end Michigan’s third-grade reading law requiring students to be reading at grade level before being allowed to advance to the fourth grade.
Senate Bill 12, sponsored by state Sen. Dayna Polehanki D-Livonia and introduced on Jan. 12, would delete a provision in the 2016 law prohibiting the promotion of a third-grade student to the fourth grade if they read a grade level behind based on their score on the state's reading assessment.
Polehanki said her bill would only eliminate retention and the rest of the law, which offers staffing recommendations, reading intervention services, and the use of evidence-based curricula and instructional materials, would remain in place.
When state assessment was canceled in the 2019-20 school year due to the pandemic, Michigan's Ready By Grade 3 law was suspended. It was to be its first year in effect. The retention component of the law went into effect for the first time for students who were in the 3rd grade in the 2020-21 school year. At the time, most educators said they would not enforce the controversial law.
Last school year, one out of every ten third graders eligible to be retained under the literacy law was held back. The 545 students retained in the third grade is more than double the amount retained in the prior school year, which was 228, according to a
“There have been disparities between public and private schools for many years...”
Considering there was a huge learning loss during the pandemic, it doesn’t seem right to punish kids for not being able to read at grade level. There have been disparities between public and private schools for many years, especially in communities of color. Black and economically disadvantaged students are more than twice as likely to be retained as their white peers. The pandemic only caused these gaps to increase.
I am glad to see that our Governor and lawmakers see the error in this law and are working towards fixing it. We’ve been through a lot in the last couple of years in school. The last thing we need is to be punished for a learning loss that was out of our control.
