Tennessee legislators look to Mississippi for guidance on changing the Third-Grade Retention Law

One of the biggest question members of the Tennessee General Assembly still haven’t answered this year is whether the state needs to make changes to its Third-Grade Retention Law.Wednesday members of the House Education Administration Committee received help making that decision from an unlikely neighboring state to the south. Former Mississippi Superintendent Dr. Carey Wright spoke before the committee on how her state has approached the topic of literacy and compared it to Tennessee’s intervention acts, including the Third-Grade Retention Law.The legislation passed in 2021 to ensure students who need additional support in reading, receive them before being promoted to fourth grade but opponents worry it may do more harm than good holding students back a grade based on their test scores.Wright says her state implemented a literacy law in 2013 called the Literacy-Based Promotion Act that made K-3 reading instruction a major focus. The legislation focused on prevention and intervention by building the capacity of teachers and school leaders to more effectively teach reading and implement an ongoing system to monitor student progress.It also required third-grade students to pass a reading test to qualify for promotion to fourth grade. This act was later amended in 2016 to raise the passing score on the third-grade reading portion of the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP).“This is not a third-grade issue. This is a Pre-K through third-grade issue,” said Wright.Wright says the Mississippi law is similar to Tennessee’s literacy efforts in nearly every field.Both states have nearly identical tools and resources to identify students who need interventions, resources for teachers and parents on how to be informed and better aid their children, and requirements for good cause exceptions where a student wouldn’t be held back a grade because of specific circumstances.The only major difference between the two states according to Wright, is in the retention of students in their grade. Children in Mississippi are given three chances to pass the MAAP.  Children who fail a third time are retained if they don’t have a good cause for promotion.Lobelville Representative Kirk Haston said he appreciated how Wright referred to the bill as a “literacy law” rather than a “retention bill.”“It’s not a ‘fail one test equals retention’ bill. This was more of a identification bill. I think it’s ‘identification, evaluation, and elevation’ bill. We gotta properly identify, we gotta properly evaluate the student and then we have to elevate that student from off of grade level to on grade level or beyond it,” said Representative Haston.Gallatin Representative William Slater also had some questions about the comparisons between the retention data Wright discussed, including the number of students Mississippi didn’t promote to the next grade.“It doesn’t seem to me that you experienced this astronomical number of retentions. Is that a true statement?” asked Representative Slater.“That is a true statement,” said Wright. “One thing I will say to you is that I said to teachers and leaders across the state, children that are being retained don’t need the same thing one more time. So third grade’s got to look different.”Wright emphasized that Mississippi’s retention law requires third grade to look different for kids retained because of the need of stronger and more in-depth intervention.“It’s got to look different in terms of intervention, it’s got to look different in terms of the minutes of the reading block. It’s got to look different in terms of how much time are spending in direct instruction. We put several things in place in our law that even if you were retained, third grade would have to look different for them,” said Wright.The House Education Administration Committee is planning to vote on bills related to the Third-Grade Retention law on March 7.