Local kids are reading better

Local third-graders are among those who are reading better these days.

Across Ohio, nearly 96 percent of third-graders met the necessary reading benchmark to be promoted to fourth grade under the state reading law. In all of Crawford County's school districts, the numbers are similarly impressive.

The Third Grade Reading Guarantee became law in June 2013. It requires students in third grade to hit certain benchmarks on reading tests to be eligible to advance to fourth grade.

The 2013-14 school year was the first year the law was fully in effect. In the 2012-13 school year, roughly 88 percent of students achieved the necessary reading scores for advancement.

"We still have work to do, but we can see that the guarantee has been effective," Richard Ross, state superintendent of public instruction, said in a statement. "While these are great results, we need to continue to focus on the approximately 5,000 boys and girls who didn't meet the threshold last year."

While a score of 400 is considered proficient on the Ohio Academic Assessment, a student needed to score 392 to meet the law's requirements last school year. This school year, students must score a 394 to avoid retention. This also is a year of transition for testing as Ohio switches to Common Core-based standardized tests.

John Charlton, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, said third-grade students took the old assessment in the fall. Students who don't reach the 394 mark will take the old assessment again in the spring. The students who do reach that mark will take the new tests in the spring and the future proficiency scores will be based on the results from the new tests.

Many of the students who did not meet the threshold were in the state's larger urban districts. Columbus City Schools had 431 third-graders not hit the benchmark — 12.4 percent of its class — and Cleveland Municipal City Schools had 386 third graders miss the mark — 14.6 percent of its class.

There were 267 districts that didn't have to retain a single third-grader last school year because of the reading law. Another 254 districts had to retain five or fewer third-graders because of the guarantee. More than 1,100 of the third-graders who did not meet the threshold were from Ohio's charter schools, which had a higher percentage of kids fail to hit the benchmark than traditional schools.

"We always place a high emphasis on early literacy. It's a foundation for success to have our students reading at an early age level," Bucyrus City Schools Superintendent Kevin Kimmel said.

At Bucyrus Elementary School, 97.9 percent of students met the promotion threshold for fourth grade.

"For the few students that didn't pass we provided a summer intervention program, and all but one student passed that. One was retained in reading, but then had an alternative assessment and was moved ahead to the fourth grade," Kimmel said.

"It didn't change anything we're doing operationally," the superintendent said of the statewide Third Grade Reading Guarantee. "What's taken extra time, energy and effort is making sure our teachers have the proper credentials. It's caused some of our teachers to take course work to become qualified reading specialists."

Kimmel said much of what the new criteria calls for was already in place at Bucyrus Elementary.

"We start identifying those issues as early as preschool, and we do assessments all along the way. The kindergarten entrance flushes out a lot of that. We have a very active response intervention program," he said.

"Unfortunately, we see a lot of students enter the building not ready to read, and we have to catch them up for the third grade."

Elsewhere in Crawford County, 93.8 percent of third-graders at Crestline Elementary School met the promotion threshold, compared to 95.2 percent at Hannah Crawford Elementary, 98.0 percent at Galion Intermediate Elementary and 98.8 percent at Wynford Elementary. At Buckeye Central Elementary, 100 percent of the students met the threshold.