I volunteer at a local elementary school on Monday mornings, tutoring children who are behind in reading. This week, I worked with Carla (whose name has been changed), a third-grade dual language learner who is reading at a first-grade level. She knows that she is behind and her confidence is low. She told me how much she disliked reading and insisted that she would never catch up to her peers. I could see Carla’s frustration mounting during our hour together. She’s feeling pressure from the invested adults in her life—teachers, school leaders, parents, and tutors—to get up to speed quickly.
That pressure isn’t without reason: Third-grade reading proficiency is predictive of future success, both inside and outside of the classroom. It has become one of the most commonly cited indicators of student achievement. To use one example: Students who aren’t proficient readers by the end of third grade are less likely to graduate high school. Readers who are not yet proficient by the end of third grade are ill-prepared for fourth, a transitional year in which content and texts become much more complex. Children who are not up to speed by then continue to fall further and further behind.
[For more of this story, written by Abbie Lieberman, go to http://www.psmag.com/books-and...l-before-third-grade]
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