Third grade has never been more important in North Carolina since the recent implementation of the Read to Achieve Law, which in essence requires students to read at grade level — or risk being held back.
In the mind of Julie Justice, an assistant professor of literacy in the UNC School of Education, North Carolina is practicing high stakes testing, which means there are serious consequences for both students and educators if end-of-year test standards are not met. The pressure put on teachers and students isn’t beneficial to anyone.
“When you go in with these models that police and require the teachers to do actions that are coming from above, it doesn’t make them better instructors. This policy is all punishment. It’s all stick and no carrot.”
The weight surrounding the assessment tests distracts from the process of learning, it diverts both students and teachers from the main goal: learning to read.
“It’s the idea that we put these final high stakes, kind of like barriers. If you don’t know all of this, you are in trouble. Developmentally, this is not how learning happens.”
Justice believes that the state needs to be committed to more than just teaching kids to outperform others in their class.
“They should read a text and should understand it enough to engage with the world. They need to be able to do things with the text they read.”
Justice feels that one of the key elements to kids being able to read successfully is to be cognizant that children have diverse needs when it comes to learning. Children come from diverse backgrounds. They have different interests. With high-stakes testing and constant assessment, it may severely hamper a child’s ability to learn how to read. One size does not fit all.
“Human beings are so varied and learning something as complex as language means that if kids aren’t getting it in the standardized models, we need a more responsive model. Something needs to happen and we need to target instruction.”
