A report recently released by the only agency to do a nationwide assessment of reading proficiency indicates that two out of three 4th graders (64 percent) in Missouri are not proficient readers. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) annually assesses reading skills at school districts throughout the U.S.—Brookfield R-3 participated in 2005—but does not provide district-level assessment results, only cross-state comparisons. We must rely upon each state’s literacy measuring tool for district results, and in Missouri that tool is the MAP Communication Arts test.
Although substantially more 4th graders in Linn County’s largest school district demonstrated reading proficiency than was the case at either the state (27% were proficient readers) or national (24% were proficient readers) levels, less than half (42.4%) of Brookfield R-3’s 4th graders were proficient readers in 2009. However, R-3 4th graders have shown substantial progress in recent years, and the planned integration of a more intensive writing component into the R-3 Elementary curriculum promises even more improvement.
A proficient reader, according to researchers at the Dominican University of California, is one who can “construct meaning from text at a reading level higher than the student’s age.” Proficient readers typically “understand why they are reading a specific text [i.e., comprehend its personal and/or social significance];” are able to “apply prior knowledge” to fully comprehend what they are reading; know what sounds correspond with which letters of the alphabet (i.e., phonemic awareness) and understand both the meaning and placement of words in a sentence (i.e., syntax and semantics); are aware of and control their own thought process (i.e., self-monitoring); are able to apply strategies such as identifying key words in sentences to assist in comprehending an entire text; and tend to read and enjoy texts about a variety of subjects.
Educators and assessors place particular emphasis upon the measurement of literacy skills of 4th graders because the transition from 3rd to 4th grade represents a quantum leap from “learning to read to reading to learn.” As the recent Kids Count and NAEP reports explain, “Reading proficiently by the end of third grade can be a make-or-break benchmark in a child’s educational development. Beginning in 4th grade, however, they are reading to learn, using their skills to gain more information in subjects such as math and science, to solve problems, to think critically about what they are learning, and to act upon and share that knowledge in the world around them.” Unfortunately, according to the Children’s Reading Foundation, “up to half of the printed 4th grade curriculum is incomprehensible to students who read below that grade level.” Yale University researchers conclude that three quarters of students who read poorly in third grade will continue to struggle with reading in high school, and the National Research Council states, “Academic success, as defined by high school graduation, can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone’s reading skill at the end of third grade.”
However, a prediction, based upon an R-3 third grader’s reading proficiency, about whether he or she will graduate from high school could be very misleading. The latest R-3 Communication Arts scores on the MAP test indicated a tremendous improvement from 3rd grade to 4th. During that transition from learning to read to reading to learn at R-3, only 24.3 percent of the 3rd graders could read proficiently, while in the same year, 42.4 percent of 4th graders were proficient readers. And by the time the R-3 3rd graders of 2008 became the R-3 4th graders of 2009, their MAP communication arts scores had risen substantially: from 24.1% who could read proficiently in 2008 to 42.4% who could do so in 2009.
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