If your child is in a Tennessee public elementary school, you might want to check their reading scores. Third graders across the Volunteer State are at risk of being held back after the TCAP reading score came out this week and found that 60 percent of third graders in Tennessee fell below proficient reading levels.
Memphis City Schools have not released their numbers, and Memphis-Shelby County is the only county in the state not to do so.
State Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis) joined KWAM’s “Wake Up Memphis” to break down what all of this means for Tennessee families and the education system.“We want our public education to be the best it can be,” he told KWAM.
Students that fell below proficiency will have to retest for a better score or enroll in summer school to move on to the fourth grade.
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White and others are actually celebrating the 40 percent proficiency because it’s a jump from the roughly 30 percent statistic from one year ago.Tennessee has put a law on the books to hopefully help students in the long run by catching issues early, White argued.
“The focus should not be on holding a third grader back, the focus is we are putting in place an opportunity to get help to those students who need it,” White said. “And so, anytime you begin something new, it upsets people, but we’ve let this go on for far too long.”
Nationally syndicated radio host and KWAM owner Todd Starnes chimed in on the reports:Only 40 % of Tenn. third graders can read at age proficiency. Public schools are too busy churning out social justice warriors instead of academic scholars. We send our kids to school to learn how to read and write, but they come home as pronoun confused, illiterate, anarchists.
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) May 23, 2023
Listen to the full segment below:
