Alabama State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey listens during the Alabama State Board of Education's regular meeting on February 9, 2023 in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brian Lyman/Alabama Reflector)
Alabama’s summer reading programs have shown promising results, but challenges persist in tracking and supporting struggling students, State Superintendent Eric Mackey said Thursday.
Speaking during the Alabama State Board of Eduction’s work session, Mackey said that about 9% of the 53,492 third graders tested this spring read below grade level. After the camps, he said, the number fell to 6.5%.
But Mackey also said the state did not test every student who was below grade level in the spring. Many students were not retested due to either disability or parental objection. Other students in fourth, fifth and sixth grades still require additional support.
“There are a lot of reasons why this number is different,” he said, adding that regional education officials are investigating the cases of nearly 1,800 students to determine what resources they need.
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Students who finished the third grade in the 2023-24 school year were the first to come under a provision of the 2019 Literacy Act requiring students to read at grade level by the end of third grade, or risk being held back. The law, aimed at raising Alabama’s performance on standardized education assessments, gave students who read below grade level the chance to attend summer camps to improve their proficiency.
Mackey said that several factors prevented some students from attending summer camps, including severe special needs, reading portfolios, and parental decisions to hold students back.
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The superintendent highlighted the success of a specific school in the Black Belt region, where six of 10 students who read below grade level before summer camp tested at grade level by the end. Mackey did not name the school due to privacy concerns, saying many schools have fewer than 10 students reading below grade level, which could make the information personally identifiable.
Mackey also announced plans to hire one specialist at the Alabama Department of Education to focus on these grade levels and to expand grant opportunities for schools with large numbers of struggling readers.
“We’re not going to leave our fourth-grade teachers hanging out to dry,” Mackey said.
The superintendent said he plans to ask for more funding in the next budget session for summer reading programs that are not available for fourth through sixth grade.
The state’s focus on early intervention and support is critical, Mackey said, as retaining students later in their academic careers can have negative social and academic outcomes.
“The later students are retained, the worse the social outcomes,” he said, adding that if children are not retained by the end of third grade, the benefits of a second year in that grade rarely outweigh the negative social and academic outcomes.
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