Despite achieving most state and federal benchmarks, Virginia’s students have a problem. Many of them are not reading on the levels that they should by third grade. Students who have not caught up by then will often all behind in other courses, and are likely to never catch up.
The state’s Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission is weighing recommendations to enhance third grade reading performance statewide. Commission members acknowledged that some of the proposals will be expensive.
Delegate Johnny Joannou found it hard to support English as A Second Language program development and funding additional staff. He said his immigrant background had socio-economic challenges and many children of his generation overcame those challenges without programs. He asked JLARC project leader Kimberly Sarte, why is there such a disparity in learning between older and current generations.
“I think that some kids aren’t getting the support they need at home, and perhaps if they’re not getting… you know, if they’re English language learners, if there’s other reasons outside of the school that they may come in kind of deficient, they’re going to have—a lot of kids— not all, a lot of kids are going to have difficulty. And so if you can kinda raise the classroom program—the level of the classroom program with some of the strategies that we’ll discuss, that’s obviously going to help these kids. If they come in and there’s maybe a classroom program that’s not as strong or there’s not as many resources available to kind of assist them, it’s hard for them to catch up,” said Sarte.
The proposals include providing more engaging reading materials, book rooms with those works, and using new digital technology.
— Tommie McNeil
Virginia Public Radio 