CLEVELAND, Ohio – Across Ohio, school districts are promoting thousands of third graders who didn’t meet state reading benchmarks, placing unprecedented demands on limited resources for reading intervention.
For the past decade, Ohio’s Third Grade Reading Guarantee required that students who failed reading benchmarks be held back. Now, a new policy hands that decision to parents, allowing them to promote their children, regardless of test scores. And recent Ohio school report card data shows that, under the new policy, the majority of parents in Cuyahoga County choose to promote their children.
The policy shift also mandates that districts provide specialized reading support — not just through third grade but across all grade levels, until students reach proficiency.
Educators warn that the surging demand is stretching their resources to the breaking point, while federal funding for reading intervention in Ohio fails to keep up with inflation, much less with the escalating need across schools.
The influx of students advancing to fourth grade despite poor reading scores began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the state temporarily paused the requirement that struggling readers be held back. During that time, fourth grade classrooms saw a tenfold increase in the percentage of students needing support in reading.
The trend disproportionately impacts some districts more than others. For example, while only 25% of third grade students in East Cleveland City School District scored proficient on the state’s reading test during the 2023-2024 school year, the district’s promotion rate was 100%. All of the third graders moved on to fourth grade in Richmond Heights Local Schools, as well, though 69% of them had not achieved proficiency. In fact, among the 31 public school districts in Cuyahoga County, all but 9 promoted 100% of their third-grade students last year.
Promoted students who miss the testing cut-off score are automatically placed on specialized reading plans that include high-dosage tutoring and access to reading interventions. But districts report that the surge in demand makes it difficult to provide the individualized help these students need.
Educators across Cuyahoga County have mixed views on the new policy. Supporters, like Warrensville Heights Superintendent Donald Jolly, believe parental involvement in deciding whether to promote a student encourages families to be more active in their children’s academic growth.
“When parents are involved in the decision, they’re more likely to assist and be accountable in helping their children,” Jolly said. “Like anybody, they’d rather be involved in the process than be told what’s going to happen.”
But in some cases, parents have opted to promote their kids when teachers have recommended them for retention, due to serious reading deficits — leaving many teachers questioning whether those parental decisions are in the students’ best interest.
The retention debate
After years of debate over the effectiveness of mandatory retention, Ohio’s most recent state budget bill, which Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law in July 2023, permanently empowered parents to make the decision about whether their children would be promoted.
It was one of several sweeping changes to reading instruction included in the bill. The others primarily centered around the state’s recent shift to what’s known as the “science of reading”, an approach to literacy education that focuses on phonics.
While the Third Grade Reading Guarantee’s retention requirement technically remains on the books, parents can now override it and require districts to promote their children regardless of their reading test scores, according to state officials.
Critics of the new approach argue that retaining students ensures they have the reading skills they need to succeed in fourth grade, without falling further behind.
Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, told cleveland.com that third grade is a pivotal time when students are transitioning from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” Without the mandate, schools can move students through the system, even if they don’t have those foundational skills.
However, educators on the front lines present a more nuanced perspective. Jillian Ahrens, a Cleveland first-grade teacher and third vice president of the Cleveland Teachers Union, believes that while early reading skills are crucial, simply holding kids back won’t solve the underlying challenges they face.
“Kids need to be reading early in their education, but it’s not like a child’s going to wake up and start reading paragraphs because they’re afraid of being retained,” said Ahrens. “I think the retention requirements are well-intentioned, but how teachers use those tenets to increase early literacy is what’s going to make the biggest difference for the kids.”
A third-grade teacher, speaking on the condition of anonymity with cleveland.com, described a student who, after being retained, went from struggling to complete assignments to becoming one of her top performers. However, she noted flaws in the policy. She recalled some past students who were progressing in reading but didn’t test well. Under mandatory retention policies, based solely on test scores, those students were still required to repeat third grade.
“Retention can work, and I’ve seen it make a huge difference for a lot of kids,” she said. “But relying solely on standardized testing scores overlooks other critical factors contributing to a child’s ability to read. For kids who just don’t test well, making them repeat the grade is going to hurt them, not help them.”
Early literacy challenges persist
The Third Grade Reading Guarantee was one of the biggest state efforts in the past decade to try to fix low early literacy rates, but research presents a complex picture of the program’s impact on student achievement.
A 2019 Ohio State University study found that the percentage of Ohio fourth graders proficient in reading hardly changed from 2007 to 2017.
However, more recent research conducted through a partnership between Ohio State University and Ohio Excels presents a different view. When comparing students who were held back in third grade to those who advanced to fourth grade but scored just above the cutoff score, retention appeared to have had a positive impact.
Researchers found that 90% of retained students who retook the third-grade assessment the following year improved their scores, and 21% surpassed the Third Grade Reading Guarantee benchmarks.
Some argue that these achievements aren’t necessarily attributable to the fact that the students were retained, but rather to the Third Grade Reading Guarantee’s other key strategy: targeted intervention support.
Among the recent changes to the Reading Guarantee was a significant broadening of the pool of students required to be on reading improvement and monitoring plans, known as RIMPs.
Districts and schools are legally required to create a RIMP for any student who is reading below grade level. Under the earlier policy, a student’s RIMP would be discontinued after third grade. But the new state policy dictates that students must stay on that intervention plan until they’re reading proficiently for their grade level, potentially through high school graduation.
That expansion of the RIMP requirements will happen gradually. In the 2024-2025 school year, the policy now includes students up to fifth grade, and each school year, from here on out, an additional grade will be added.
Funding and resource concerns
But how will school districts cover the additional expense?
A large source of federal literacy funding is Title I, a program aimed at improving academic achievement in schools serving low-income students. Districts with at least 40% of students from low-income families can use Title I funds for programs that have schoolwide benefits.
In Maple Heights, administrators regularly use Title I dollars to secure enough educational support for students. The funds are used to hire Title I teachers, tutors, literacy coaches and reading specialists who help students reading below grade level.
But with an ever-increasing pool of students eligible for RIMPs, educators and school officials are concerned about having enough resources.
Although Ohio’s Title I funding has increased year over year, it hasn’t kept pace with inflation – let alone with the rising demand for reading intervention. In 2023, Ohio schools received more than $654 million in Title I funding. To match that award in 2024, adjusted for inflation, the state would need to have received more than $674 million, but the allocation fell short by nearly $17 million.
Aherns said that while the state is often well-intentioned, educators struggle with mandates that come unfunded, especially in large urban districts like Cleveland where the need is often greater.
“What I think they don’t see is now we have to get intervention tools into the upper grades and train teachers on how to use those interventions,” Aherns said. “The state can make a rule, but what have they provided to make it successful? What are we actually doing to help the child move off the RIMP? What are we doing to make sure the child can read?”