State lawmakers continue to advance conflicting plans to reduce the number of fourth-graders held back under new reading requirements

Tennessee lawmakers have expressed a desire to reduce the number of fourth-graders held back under new state reading requirements, but with the legislative session winding down, there’s still disagreement on the best way to make that happen.

Two different bills are advancing through House committees that would address the issue and a recent House committee meeting illustrated the potential challenges that may lie ahead deciding on one of them.Each bill aims to address a provision of the state’s new Third-Grade Retention Law that impacts fourth-graders. The new law allows third-graders who fail to show English language arts (ELA) proficiency on state tests to advance to the fourth-grade through summer school and/or tutoring in their fourth-grade year.  Those children who receive tutoring still need to show “adequate growth” on state testing in the fourth-grade to advance to the fifth-grade under the law.

The state estimates between 40 to 66 percent of fourth-grade students taking tutoring will need to be retained for failing to meet adequate growth, roughly 6 to 10 thousand students. The House Education Committee advanced Representative Gary Hicks’s, R-Rogersville, “Alternative Pathways to Fifth-Grade” bill Thursday as one option to reduce the number of fourth-graders retained. The legislation would provide additional pathways for those fourth-graders to advance.

The problem is, that same House Committee also advanced a competing plan to address the fourth-grade concern in the Education Freedom Scholarship Act. The provision of House Bill 1183 would remove the fourth-grade retention section of the new law altogether.Representative Scott Cepicky, R-Culleoka, asked Hicks to hold his bill on the chance the fourth-grade provision of the Education Freedom Scholarship Act fails to pass.

“(I’m) not trying to derail or slow down new fourth-grade because it is very important to the people of Tennessee, we have heard very clearly that they do not like the fourth-grade part. You have made it very clear that you do not like the fourth-grade part about retaining students at all. Which is the result of this language. This bill came after (House Bill) 1183 came through this committee,” said Cepicky.

Still some representatives preferred to keep the two plans separate, in part because the Senate version of the Education Freedom Scholarship Act does not contain a provision addressing fourth-grade retention.

If both versions of the Act pass as written, a conference committee would merge the two plans and there’s no guarantee the committee would include the fourth-grade retention provision.

“I don’t see that there’s a problem with moving forward with this bill. I don’t know what holding it up because at the end of the day this bill, if you’re going to put it into (House Bill) 1183, it’s the same thing going forward,” said Hicks. “My intention is just to run this bill as you see it and no games, and I don’t want there to be any games. It’s just what you see is what you get, I don’t want to get crossed up with 1183 in one form or fashion.”

Hicks’ bill could head to the full House as early as next week while the House version of the Education Freedom Scholarship Act is currently awaiting a vote in the House Finance, Ways, and Means Subcommittee.