Reading Report Puts California Data in Perspective
A report released this week by the Annie E. Casey Foundation highlights the percentage of students nationwide who miss the mark in terms of 3rd grade reading proficiency — and what should be done about it.
The report, “Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters,” notes that 33% of 4th graders nationwide scored below “basic” on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading test. The percentage scoring below basic was even higher — 49% — among low-income students, and higher still for African American, Hispanic, and American Indian students.
In comparison to other states, California 4th graders ranked close to the top; but no state reached “proficient” status, according to the 2007 NAEP scale.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation offers several recommendations for tackling this issue, including increased family/caregiver involvement, more help for low-performing schools, solutions for chronic school absences and summer learning loss, and early education coordination from birth through 3rd grade. But most of all, the foundation asks public officials to honor the bipartisan work that has already been done in this area with regard to national standards of excellence.
To download the report, visit http://datacenter.kidscount.org/reports/readingmatters.aspx. For local reading proficiency data on kidsdata.org (statewide data coming soon!) visit http://www.kidsdata.org/data/topic/dashboard.aspx?cat=25.
Tags: Data Projects, Data Sources
Posted by Felicity Simmons
This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 2:42 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.