Three years into the implementation of the LEARNS Act, Arkansas educators are bracing for a new reading proficiency requirement that will determine which third graders can be promoted to the fourth grade. Standardized tests will be administered in the coming weeks at all public school districts and open-enrollment charter schools to provide a high-stakes assessment that will inevitably involve some students having to repeat third grade.

Requiring a basic reading ability is vital at this stage for students, Arkansas Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said in an interview with The Glenwood Herald’s Editor and Publisher Roby Brock.

“If students aren’t able to be proficient readers by fourth grade and you start getting deeper into content and explicit instruction on how to read isn’t as prevalent, then school’s not fun. We don’t want kids to just go to school and not have fun because you’re struggling to read,” Oliva said.

Allowing those students to be automatically advanced to fourth grade makes them more likely to struggle in later years, data shows. The state Department of Education identifies third grade reading proficiency as a “pivotal predictor of future academic success,” including whether they will graduate from high school.

If the new requirement had been in place last year, test results show only 36% percent of students would have been promoted to the fourth grade. But new assessments and interventions have been implemented since then which educators hope will ensure that won’t be the result this year.  

At Centerpoint Elementary School in Amity, which serves parts of Pike, Garland, Clark and Hot Spring counties in southwest Arkansas, Principal Erica Doster says reading is still being taught the same way as before the LEARNS Act was enacted. But she says new processes during this school year allowed teachers to do a better job of tracking which students were at risk of falling behind and provided time to offer extra tutoring when needed.

“What we did change is the way that we document those interventions and keep up with the monitoring of their progress throughout the year,” Doster said. “I feel pretty confident that we will not have very many kids — if any — that we have to retain.”

It can be difficult socially for students to be held back while their peers advance to a higher grade. Secretary Oliva speculated that during the previous school year, before the reading requirement was implemented, almost 10,000 K-12 grade students were retained for various reasons. 

He says the LEARNS Act now provides strategies for teachers and parents to implement an Individual Reading Plan (IRP) to try and avoid having to repeat a grade. 

“If we see a student is not making grade level, well, what we’re able to do this year is maybe they need some short-term high impact tutoring, maybe they need to be in a summer program,” Oliva said. “So now we come together with a plan. You’re not automatically retained. What you’re required to do is have a plan on how we’re going to fill those gaps — and retention may be part of that plan — but it’s not the absolute.”

Doster says Centerpoint Elementary has been sending letters to parents notifying them if their students are at risk of being held back and what steps are being taken to try and prevent that. Strategies are also given on how parents can support reading at home. 

“We have been keeping a close eye on a lot of kids, making sure that we’re providing the interventions that they need in order to be successful,” Doster said. “I don’t feel like there’s going to be a lot that we’re really looking at or worried about.”

The state allows districts to administer the Arkansas Teaching & Learning Assessment System (ATLAS) test any time between April 13 and May 22. Students at Centerpoint Elementary will be taking the test during the last week of April. Doster hopes to have the scores of her students the following week. 

“We have an idea of who is at risk, but of course, we don’t know for sure until they take that end of the year summative test,” she said.

Students will need to score at Level 2 or higher in reading to advance to fourth grade unless they qualify for a “good cause exemption.” That includes students with the most significant cognitive disabilities, those with less than three years of formal English instruction, students who have already been retained and those who have experienced an isolated traumatic event that directly impacted their assessment. 

Doster has mixed feelings about the prospect of having to retain some third graders.

“It could be a good thing or it could be a bad thing,” she said. “I think what the LEARNS Act is requiring of schools, just to make sure there’s some accountability on providing those interventions and that extra help along the way to prevent that is what I feel like the purpose is. And so I do feel like that’s a good thing.”

Reforming education was a priority for Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders when she came into office three years ago. The most controversial component of the LEARNS Act has been using public funds to create Education Freedom Accounts (EFA), which can be used to pay for private, parochial or home schools. 

The Arkansas Legislature approved the plan in 2023 and will need to increase funding for the EFA program during a fiscal session that began Wednesday, April 8. Sanders’ budget proposal would set aside up to $379 million for the program.