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Nearly 48 percent of the 1,128 Tulsa Public Schools third-graders who scored unsatisfactory on the state reading test in the spring have either qualified for exemptions or are being considered for probationary promotion to fourth grade, officials said Wednesday.
Meanwhile, only four students who attended an intensive summer reading program scored well enough on an alternative test to be promoted.
TPS officials are still identifying the number of students who will be retained next year.
“I think we are beginning to have a much clearer picture. We have on average, 11 students for every elementary school in the district who as of now are going to be retained,” said Tracy Bayles, chief academic officer at TPS.
“Obviously, some sites have more and some sites have none, but we are continuing to meet with parents and teams to make responsible decisions based on data about whether any more should move on to fourth grade.”
Roughly half of the district’s lowest-scoring third-graders recently completed a special month-long summer academy taught by veteran TPS reading specialists.
TPS officials said earlier this summer that most of the students in the summer academy would be retained in the third grade, but a limited number may be able to qualify for promotion if they are able to pass an alternative reading assessment the school district is offering this summer to third-graders with unsatisfactory scores before school resumes in August.
At the end of the summer reading academy, four of the 558 third-graders enrolled were able to demonstrate reading proficiency on an alternative test, Bayles said.
“One issue we have had is that only half of all of the students who qualified for summer academy attended, and another issue is that 20 percent of those students were absent on the testing day at the end,” Bayles said.
“We are sending out parent letters to let them know what their options are, including additional testing dates in August, but the likelihood of them being able to pass the (alternative) assessment at this point is going to be difficult, for sure,” she said.
A 2011 change in the state Reading Sufficiency Act taking effect this year required that all third-graders scoring in the lowest achievement range on the state reading test be held back unless they meet one of the following exemptions:
English-language learners with less than two years of English instruction who are found to be “limited-English proficient.”
Disabled students who are assessed with the Oklahoma Alternate Assessment Program.
Students who pass a state-approved alternative standardized reading test.
Students who can prove they read and write on grade level using a teacher-developed portfolio of their classwork.
Disabled students with documented proof of intensive reading remediation for more than two years, and who were previously held back one year or were in a transitional grade.
Students who have received intensive remediation in reading for more than two years and who already have been retained in a previous grade for two years.
Previously, Tulsa Public Schools officials said about 400 students had qualified for promotion to fourth grade by meeting at least one of those exemptions, but Wednesday they said the actual number is 225.
“We had students who moved from site to site during the year who were counted multiple times in an earlier count,” said Chris Payne, a spokesman for TPS.
Late in the spring, the passage of House Bill 2625, sponsored by state Rep. Katie Henke and state Sen. Gary Stanislawski, both R-Tulsa, added an allowance for “probationary promotion” to fourth grade for those struggling readers by a committee composed of the student’s parent or guardian, third-grade teacher, a fourth-grade teacher, a reading specialist and the principal, with the probationary period pending final approval by the district superintendent.
The committee would be responsible for monitoring the student’s reading performance each year until the student is reading at grade level.
The legislation passed both the state House and Senate but was vetoed by Gov. Mary Fallin. The House and Senate voted overwhelmingly to override Fallin’s veto.
Bayles said 280 students will be considered for probationary promotion by committees of parents and educators at the student’s school site. She said those students were either a question or two shy of passing the alternative reading test given at the end of summer academy or they made significant progress in reading skills since the spring state test was given in April.
And regardless of whether they will begin fourth grade in August or at a later date, all struggling readers will pick up right where they left off in System 44, the research-proven remedial program that TPS has been using districtwide since the late fall, Bayles said.
“We have also been preparing for this situation in our teacher allocations. All elementary school teachers are certified to teach third and fourth grade, so it will just be a matter of whether that teacher ends up teaching third grade or fourth grade depending on the final numbers,” Bayles said.
Parents of affected students can schedule an appointment to have them take an alternative reading assessment on Aug. 7 or Aug. 12 at the TPS Enrollment Center, 2819 S. New Haven Ave., which is the facility just north of the Educational Service Center. Parents need to contact Cathy Walton in the TPS Curriculum and Instruction office by Aug. 1 at 918-925-1130.
