Tennessee fourth-grade retention results coming in June, July

KINGSPORT — So your Tennessee child's reading scores on the standardized test in third grade weren't up to par?So he or she avoided being held back to taking mandatory tutoring in fourth grade in an effort to improve the scores.Now, your student must make adequate yearly progress, as determined by the state, or he or she will be held back in the fourth grade.There will be no alternative path around reading test performance in fourth grade, meaning some children who weren't held back in third grade last year could be held back under state law in fourth grade this year.This only pertains to fourth graders who did not receive an exemption or meet a promotion pathway in third grade and are in mandatory fourth grade free tutoring."We need to make sure parents do not think it pertains to all fourth grade students. Students can also attain proficiency on the fourth grade ELA (English language arts) TCAP (Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program) to be promoted," said Michael Hubbard, director of performance excellence for Kingsport City Schools.Michael Hubbard and Holly Flora, chief academic officer for elementary schools, recently said in an interview that KCS has been working to inform parents of the likely vote Friday by the Tennessee Board of Education.The vote is to be on a formula to be used for fourth graders who are undergoing required tutoring this year, a formula that will determine if they move on to fifth grade or are held back in the fourth.Tutoring in fourth grade was one of the ways students could avoid being held back in third grade along "with the expectation of making adequate growth on the ELA TCAP" in the fourth grade, Hubbard said.Depending on their third grade TCAP reading and writing scores, they also could have attended summer reading school in 2023, maintained 90% attendance and showed adequate growth on the summer post test, Hubbard said.This year's third graders will be under the same third grade retention law, and if their test scores are too low in reading they will have to either repeat the third grade, go to summer reading program and be tested and/or be tutored in fourth grade.Some third graders who have learning issues of a learning disability or suspected disability are exempt, as are those formerly held back a grade and are English language learnings with less than two years of ELA instruction.Also, those who have had "catastrophic" life events including becoming homeless, losing a parent to death or having a family member incarcerated, also can proceed to fourth grade on an appeal.Flora said the formula the state board is set to approve Friday is based on the "probabiity" of how fourth graders who score approaching expectations or markedly below expectations on this year's TCAPs will fare.She and Hubbard said that projection will be based on this formula: 50% minus the students probably of scoring proficient on the fourth grade ELA TCAP, which is then divided by eight, the number of years students will take assessments from third through 10th grades.They said students and the school system won't know until around July 1 which students would be held back because of the law, although Hubbard emphasized it would affect only fourth grade students who required tutoring this school year to catch up from lagging scores from last school year when they were in third grade.If a student's score is proficient or better, he or she can move on to fifth grade.But Hubbard said nobody would know the performance level for proficiency until mid-June and the adequate growth by July 1.Tennessee is using a private company called SAS, which does Tennessee Value Added Assessment or TVAAS scores, to calculate which students will have to repeat fourth grade.Flora SAS will use the TVAAS scores in the formula to project what student scores would be."We won't know until they release the data to us," Hubbard said.The school system has information on its website in a third and fourth grade heading under the Families tab at k12k.com and meetings open to parents to present information about the state BOE plan.