Reading is the most essential skill that children learn in school. It is taught over a 4-5 year period that begins in preschool or kindergarten and extends to 3rd grade. Beyond 3rd grade, schooling turns from learning to read, to reading to learn.
Promoting children to the 4th and subsequent grades without sound reading skills not only reduces their chances of success, it misleads their parents about the child’s progress, it unloads poorly equipped and discouraged learners on middle and high school teachers, and it violates the spirit if not the letter of Tennessee’s 2011 law against socially promoting unqualified students.
Social promotion of students who lack mastery of reading ignores their needs, drags down the progress of all students, and makes schooling vastly more inefficient and expensive. Children who cannot read simply cannot fully benefit from their educational opportunities. They need more help, more contact hours of teaching, and more specialized treatment – all of which takes more teachers, more specialists, and more time in school.
Testing results of the past 20 years show that less than half of Tennessee’s school children are mastering reading by the end of the 3rd grade.
Click on the links below to see whether children in your local schools are reading or just being promoted:
• Anderson, Blount, and Nearby Counties 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Hamilton County 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Knox County 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Nashville 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Sumner, Rutherford, & Wilson Counties 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Williamson and Nearby Counties 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Shelby County (use legal-size page) 2012 2013 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Washington, Johnson City, and Nearby 2012 2013 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Madison and Nearby Counties 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021
• Chester, Decatur, Fayette, Hardin, Hardeman, Haywood, Henderson, & McNairy Counties 2019 2021
ECF also offers the following district-level charts:
• West Tennessee 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021 2023
• Middle Tennessee 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021 2023
• East Tennessee 2012 2013 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2021 2023
• All Districts Economic Disadvantage vs 3rd Grade Reading Proficiency by District 2015, 2022
You can also compare schools in Tennessee and any other state by visiting our interactive charts of 3rd-grade reading proficiency versus poverty: http://education-consumers.