Passed Along and Left Behind

I tutor middle schoolers in Irvington, New Jersey, and some of them are still learning how to read. They can’t sound out unfamiliar words, they lose track halfway through a paragraph, and their sentences fall apart on the page. Every one of them has been promoted to the next grade, year after year. Nobody stopped to check whether they could do the work.

The numbers suggest my students are far from alone. In 2022, 9-year-olds’ scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress dropped 5 points in reading and 7 points in math compared with 2020. Reading scores hadn’t fallen that much since 1990, and math scores had never fallen at all. Lower-income kids are taking the hardest hit. In Tennessee, about 20% of economically disadvantaged third graders met expectations in English language arts, compared with 43% of their classmates. Across the country, the reading gap between lower- and higher-income students is 33 percentage points in fourth grade and 29 in eighth.

Meanwhile, grades keep going up. The average high school GPA rose from 3.17 in 2010 to 3.36 in 2021, during the same years test scores were sliding. When a report card says a child is on track and she isn’t, her parents have no reason to worry. Families with money can hire a tutor once they figure out something is wrong. Families without it are counting on the school to notice, and when the school just moves the child up a grade, the problem gets bigger every year until it’s very hard to fix. We tell ourselves that promoting struggling kids keeps them from falling behind, but my students are proof that it does the opposite.

I think students should have to show they’ve learned basic reading and math before they move on to the next grade. That testing should start early in elementary school, when the gaps are smaller and easier to close. And a failing score should lead to something concrete, or the test is pointless.

Mississippi already does this. Third graders there have to pass a reading test to advance, and kids who don’t pass get extra help, including summer literacy camps. Last year the state sent more than 30,000 struggling readers to those camps, and by the end of the summer, half of them were reading at grade level.

I know the objections. People say high-stakes tests put too much pressure on young kids, and studies on holding students back have found mixed results. I take that seriously, which is why I care so much about the summer programs. The point is to get kids caught up so they never have to repeat a grade. Giving up part of summer vacation is a real sacrifice for an 8-year-old, and honestly, wanting that summer back is a pretty good reason to work hard during the school year. It’s still a much better deal than getting to seventh grade and not being able to read your own textbook.

The system we have now is failing, and lower-income students are bearing most of the damage. They depend on their schools to notice when they’re struggling and to help them before it’s too late. Too often, their schools just send them on to the next grade instead.

Emma Cardoso is a senior at Kent Place School in Summit, New Jersey. She plays three varsity sports and founded a reading and English as a Second Language tutoring initiative for immigrant families in Irvington, New Jersey.