Michigan third graders held back over reading doubled last year, report says

One out of every ten third graders eligible to be retained under Michigan's third-grade literacy law were held back last school year, according to a new report released on Tuesday.

The 545 students retained is more than double the amount retained in the prior school year, which was 228, according to a new report by the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at Michigan State University.

Michigan's 2016 literacy law says third-grade students can be stopped from moving to the fourth grade if they read a grade level behind based on their score on the state's reading assessment.

Katharine Strunk, a Michigan State professor of education policy and faculty director of EPIC, said Michigan school districts still promoted the vast majority of retention-eligible students in both school years.

The retention component of the law went into effect for the first time for students who were in the 3rd grade in the 2020-21 school year.

In total, 5,680 Michigan third-grade students out of 97,137 who took the test were eligible to be held back or retained because they scored below a test score cut-point on the 2022 Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as M-STEP, in English Language Arts, which has a literacy component.

Researchers attributed at least part of the jump in retention of eligible students to an increase in the number of students taking the test.

The data found 95.4% of third-grade students tested in English Language Arts this past spring compared with 71.2% last year, 2020-21, when many parents opted out of testing during the COVID-19 pandemic. This year's rate is similar to the test participation rate of 96.5% in 2018-19 before the pandemic.

Researchers found 52.4% of retention-eligible students who were promoted to fourth grade last school year received a "parent request" exemption. The second most frequently used exemption — at 23.2% — was for students with an individualized education program (IEP) or Section 504 Plan.

Families or educators can seek to stop a student from being held back by requesting an exemption, but the final decision rests with a school district's superintendent.

Strunk said the report shows that there were disparities in retention outcomes by race and economic disadvantage. Black and economically disadvantaged students are more than twice as likely to be retained as their White and wealthier peers. These gaps increased in 2021-22 compared to the prior year, she said.

Districts reported that they would retain 13.6% of eligible Black students, compared to about 5.7% of eligible white students, and this disparity in retention rates increased from 2020-21 to 2021-22.

Economically disadvantaged students were twice as likely to be retained than their wealthier peers, the data shows. Lower-performing and urban districts, as well as charter schools, were more likely than others to hold back all of their retention-eligible students, researchers found.

Districts were less likely to retain students with disabilities and English learners than students not in these groups, the report says.

Good cause exemptions are available to these groups under the law. Yet students with disabilities and English learners experienced increased retention rates in the 2021-22 school year compared to 2020-21, according to the MSU report.

jchambers@detroitnews.com