Thanks to the actions of this Congress last year, we will soon have for the very first time a voluntary national test based on national standards in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math.
While Cincinnati public schools have not hit their targets, they have improved in all four consistently measurable areas: fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math, graduation rates and college enrollment.
By third grade, children from low-income families who are not reading at grade level are six times less likely to graduate from high school than students who are proficient.
Granted, generally the children were not reading at grade level, but they are making strides in the right direction!
It guaranteed that a child enrolled in kindergarten this year would be reading at grade-level by the end of the second grade.
Thanks to this parental freedom, Milwaukee's public schools are now promising parents who enroll their kids in kindergarten personal tutors -- at the school's expense -- if those students are not reading at grade-level by the end of second grade.
In fact, the minimum reading skill level required of new factory workers has risen from the 10th grade reading level to the equivalent of two years of college or more.
While we should maintain the law's strong focus on getting kids to proficiency in reading and math, grade-level math and reading skills are just the beginning of what children will need to succeed in 21st-century workplaces.
The story, which started out interesting, devolved into one told at a sixth grade reading level.
Georgia's fourth- and eighth-grade reading, math and science scores all trail the national average, and the spread between white and black or Hispanic students is 25 points.
He coaches auditors to use action verbs such as "verify" and "confirm" and tells them to write below a 12th-grade reading level so it can be easily understood.
In fourth-grade reading, six urban districts have participated since the exam was first given in 2002 and each posted gains of at least twice the national average of three points.
The book will still be available to older students, but it was removed from the 6th-grade reading list because one parent found a paragraph in the book that he believed was insulting and denigrating to Mormons, and young children should not be introduced to the religion through the book.
She hopes the extra time will help bring students up to their grade level in reading, vocabulary, math, science and life skills.
According to the Council of the Great City Schools, students in sixty-six major city school systems in thirty-eight states showed gains in fourth- and eighth-grade math and reading in 2005.
My sixth-grade class was reading this happy, snoozy tale about a girl and her horse, and my friend Michelle sneaked me the Wyndham book, which chronicles the end of the civilized world.
Steven Wyner's client, Deborah Porter, asked the Manhattan Beach district (south of Santa Monica) to give her fourth-grade son extra reading instruction and work on his socializing skills. (He would later be diagnosed with autism.) She won an administrative ruling requiring the district to provide them.
Not that I'm necessarily equating the two in terms of literary merit, but I remember when I discovered "The Hardy Boys" in fifth or sixth grade: After reading the first book, I was so smitten I begged my parents to buy me the remaining fortysomething volumes for my birthday.
In eighth grade, the national reading score hasn't budged since 2002, but students in Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles posted gains, while the other cities remained steady.
The 1991 IEA Reading Literacy Study assessed the reading literacy of 4th and 9th grade pupils in 31 countries and looked at performance in the narrative, expository, and documents domains.
She says it's typical for the kids who read to dogs for just 20 minutes a week to improve their reading skills by a couple of grade levels in one school year.
It's like the difference between reading books for the sake of reading and reading books just to get a good grade.
He left school after the ninth grade and said he has poor reading skills.
Do 3rd grade teachers stay up at night reading up on the latest patent jurisprudence?
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Most children enter the academy several grade levels behind in math and reading.
About 85% of kids grades three through eight began the school year two or more grade levels behind, on one reading evaluation.
The big one, I would say, and that others have agreed might come down the road, is really changing the deadline that requires all children to perform at grade level, not just in reading and math, but science and social studies by the year 2014.
Under the current arrangements the speaking and listening controlled assessment makes up 20% of the overall grade, with 40% on the reading and writing controlled assessment and 40% on the written exams.
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Rhode Island, for example, in 2009 passed regulations requiring that all health insurance policies in the state, beginning in 2010, be written at an eighth-grade level, which is the average reading level for state residents.
Fewer boys make the grade: 80.9% did so in reading this year and 75.5% in writing.
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