MEMPHIS, Tenn — Hundreds of Memphis-Shelby County School parents do not know if their children will have to repeat a grade ahead of the start of a new school year just days away.
“I’m in the dark on a lot of stuff,” said Iesha Wooten, 3rd Grade Parent.
Less than a week before her son begins the 3rd grade at KIPP Collegiate Elementary School, Wooten said she wonders how crowded his classroom will be after the first round of Tennessee’s new retention law.
“If they got the old third graders, what are they going to do with the new third graders? That’s a lot,” said Wooten.
In May, it was reported 76% of MSCS 3rd graders did not score high enough on the state reading test to move on to the 4th grade. This is higher than the state’s overall rate at 60%.
Since then, most students were able to appeal their scores and agree to be tutored next year. Meanwhile, 667 students, about 10% of the 3rd grade at MSCS, were enrolled at the Summer Learning Academy. Students at SLA would have the ability to move on to the next grade if they showed sufficient enough growth over the summer.
Many were expecting to have the results from SLA by now; however, several classes were interrupted due to power outages from storms over the past month. Now, several students still have make-up days to complete.
“There were so many off-ramps that through remediation and things like this, I think that’s how we brought it down,” said Rep. Mark White.
The Republican state representative was a big proponent of the retention law and tells ABC24 he thinks the law still holds a lot of potential moving forward.
“We had a tremendous push back, but at the end of the day, I think we did the right thing,” said White.
Ahead of the next legislative session in Nashville, Representative White said lawmakers could be eyeing earlier points of intervention to help improve state reading scores.
“We’re going to take a hard look at K, 1 and 2, and what we’re possibly missing there to allow a child to get to the third grade at eight-years-old and talk about retaining them,” said White.
However, parents like Wooten feel otherwise and argue the retention law based on the yearly reading test does not accurately capture a student’s learning ability.
“A lot of children don’t learn on the same grade level,” said Wooten, “There should be inclusion, one on one, and IEPs.”
MSCS told ABC24 once the remaining students complete their make-up days from the summer, the district will need to verify the data before everyone gets the final results.
When asked, the Tennessee Department of Education said results will likely take a couple of weeks and be updated later this summer, which ends September 21st.