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With one school year under the new 3rd grade retention law in the books, State Sen. Adam Lowe (R-Calhoun) gave his thoughts to local school board members on the legislation.

Lowe spoke during last week’s McMinn County Legislative Breakfast at Michael’s in Athens to members of the McMinn County, Athens and Etowah school boards, noting that he and State Rep. Mark Cochran (R-Englewood) were able to get some changes into the law before it was implemented.

The law states that students in 3rd grade “shall not” be promoted to 4th unless they receive a rating of “on track” or “mastered” on the English Language Arts portion of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP) test.

For students who fall short of the standards, there are a few ways to achieve promotion without retaking the same grade level. They are: if the student is an English language learner with less than two years of ELA instruction; the student has already been retained in K-3; the student is retested and scores proficient; the student attends a learning loss camp with a 90% attendance rate and demonstrates “adequate” growth on the test; or the student is assigned a tutor for the entire upcoming year.

“Mark and I carried a bill that got integrated into the legislation,” he said. He noted that their alterations included considering benchmark assessments rather than just the TCAP test, added an appeals process that Lowe said has succeeded in 55 of 57 attempts this year in McMinn County, and allowing 1st and 2nd grade students to attend summer camps if their parents choose to allow them.

Lowe said the appeals process was something all key parties agreed to as a result of concerns over some students being poor test takers or having a bad day on testing day.

“We came to a consensus of ... if this is a kid who’s just bad at taking tests, as long as there’s evidence of literacy, let’s have a clear appeals process to go through,” Lowe said.

Students are also able to retake the test and Lowe said that’s something he would encourage.

“We’re just trying to find out if kids are literate enough that they can continue to progress through elementary school,” he said. “When I talk to high school teachers behind closed doors, they are thankful we want the kids reading by the time they get to 9th grade. (Teachers he’s talked to) are having a fit with kids in 8th, 9th and 10th grade who simply are not functionally literate.”

He said one thing he’s seen that’s encouraged him since the law has been in place is the awareness it’s brought up.

“Parents are now more aware of what it means (to be literate),” he said. “I get parents who say, ‘well, my kid can read,’ but can they comprehend? A lot of parents couldn’t tell the difference.”

He noted that in Bradley County, which he also represents, 10 students were required to go to summer camp in order to advance to 4th grade, but 380 children ended up attending.

“Parents are buying into giving their kids supplemental support,” he said.

There were concerns voiced last summer about the new law, but during the Athens City School Board’s recent workshop, it was noted that no students may end up being held back as a result of the law.

“At this point, I really don’t know what else we can do to massage that (law),” Lowe said. “Attention to literacy seems to be helping with learning loss. I think what we ended up doing with that literacy law was something very flexible, it empowers you at the local level to engage earlier, it empowers you to advise your families on retake opportunities and the appeals process, and it allows you to use benchmark assessments and other evidence in the appeals process to show a child is literate.”

Translation: We are trying to clean up our messed up law because of not thinking it through…

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