CICP

Please take a moment to read the Indianapolis Star’s excellent editorial on Senate Bill 258, a measure which the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership strongly supports.

It’s perhaps obvious that reading is the defining skill on which all other education – and life success – depends.  The statistics are startling:  Only 2% of students who experience serious problems with reading go on to complete a 4-year college program.  Over 50% of people with the lowest literacy skills already live in poverty and over 70% are unemployed or have only a part-time job.  Nearly 70% of prison inmates nationally score below a fourth grade level of reading; 19% are illiterate.

In Indiana, approximately one of every four 3^rd graders fail the language arts I-STEP exam; we rank among the bottom half of states in National Assessment of Educational Performance (NAEP) reading tests as well.  There’s a clear connection between these failures in early reading and the fact that Indiana’s adult population is among the least-educated in the nation – a major economic handicap in our knowledge-based economy. 

The Indiana Department of Education is making reading education its top priority, exploring new resources and tools for educators to teach reading more effectively and measure student progress.  Private and charitable organizations support a network of extracurricular programs that support these goals – for example, the United Way’s “Success by Six” and “Early Reader’s Club” initiatives.

We also need public policy that supports reading success.  In reading education, 3^rd grade is considered the gateway year – as stated in the Star’s editorial, the last year that students learn to read, before lesson plans demand that they begin reading to learn.  According to the National Reading Panel, “Academic success, as defined by high school graduation, can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone’s reading skill at the end of 3rd grade. A person who is not at least a modestly skilled reader by that time is unlikely to graduate from high school.” (emphasis added)

That’s why SB258 puts an end to social promotion from 3^rd grade to 4^th grade without demonstrating reading proficiency on the I-STEP exam.  This policy demands that schools teach every student to read, monitoring progress and allowing for special instruction from kindergarten on to make sure that the 3^rd-to-4^th grade threshold can be passed.

This policy has worked wonders in Florida, providing us a blueprint to emulate.  In 2002, the Sunshine State implemented a policy ending promotion of third graders who couldn’t read at grade level, implementing intensive reading instruction for retained students and other reforms; the results have been dramatic:

–      In 2001, 43% of Florida 3^rd graders failed to read at grade level or above as measured by FCAT (the Florida standardized test, akin to our I-STEP); in 2009 only 29% failed;

–      From 2002 to 2007, Florida climbed from 31^st in 4^th grade public school NAEP reading scores to 21^st, achieving the second highest positive change in NAEP scores in the nation; during the same time, Indiana slid from 15^th to 27^th in NAEP 4^th grade reading;

–      Using the non-promotion policy and focused intensive instruction, Florida cut is failure rates by one-third (FCAT 33%, NAEP 36%) in less than 10 years.

Florida’s path is clear – will Indiana follow? By requiring that schools meet their commitment to teach every student to read, SB258 is an important legislative component to our broader goal of giving future generations the best opportunity to succeed, academically and in life, by emphasizing what has been the called ‘the new civil right’ – the ability to read.