Michigan Senate panel advances bill scrapping retention in third-grade reading law

A state Senate committee on Tuesday advanced legislation that would scrap Michigan's third-grade reading law requiring students to be reading at grade level before being allowed to advance to the fourth grade.

Senate Bill 12, sponsored by state Sen. Dayna Polehanki D-Livonia and introduced on Jan. 12, would delete a provision in the 2016 law prohibiting the promotion of a third-grade student to the fourth grade if they read a grade level behind based on their score on the state's reading assessment.

Polehanki said her bill would only eliminate retention and the rest of the law, which offers staffing recommendations, reading intervention services, and the use of evidence-based curricula and instructional materials, would remain in place.

"It's a clean bill," Polehanki said. "The parent notifications remain. My bill has decreased costs to the School Aid Fund."

The Democratic-controlled Senate Education Committee approved the bill on a 5-1 vote with Republican Sen. John Damoose of Harbor Springs voting no and Republican Sen. Ruth Johnson of Holly not voting. The bill now heads to the Senate floor for debate and consideration by all 38 senators.

For more than two years, state lawmakers have introduced bills to pause the controversial law or eliminate the retention requirement, all of which failed under Republican control. On Jan. 1, Democrats took over control of the House and Senate following victories in the November election.

Public school districts have been following the law which calls for screening young students within the first 30 days of the start of the school year, documenting reading intervention plans and contacting families.

"It doesn’t seem to me to be the time to weaken our standards or accountability," Damoose said before voting against the bill. "Do schools have the resources to provide this extra support to kids right now?"

When state assessment was canceled in the 2019-20 school year due to the pandemic, Michigan's Ready By Grade 3 law was suspended. It was to be its first year in effect. 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. At the time, most educators said they would not enforce the controversial law.

Last school year, one out of every ten third graders eligible to be retained under the literacy law were held back. The 545 students retained in the third grade is more than double the amount retained in the prior school year, which was 228, according to a report by the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative (EPIC) at Michigan State University.

More:Number of Michigan third-graders flagged for retention rises, MSU report finds

 The K-12 Alliance of Michigan, a coalition of southeast Michigan education leaders, praised the Senate committee's action to repeal the third grade reading law.

 "By removing the law's focus on punishing students that have fallen behind and allowing educators to instead partner with parents to design a recovery plan specific to their student, we will help kids across Michigan learn, grow and succeed once again," said Robert McCann, executive director of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan, in a statement.

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.

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has long opposed the law and in 2020 moved to educate parents about exemption options to the state's third-grade reading law, calling it a "punitive law" that could be a "nightmare for families."

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.

On Tuesday, Strunk told the committee there are 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.

jchambers@detroitnews.com