![]() *In 19, testing accommodations were not permitted. SOURCE: The National Assessment of Educational Progress. More than a third of fourth graders don’t read on a basic level. You can see it in the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a standardized test given every two years to measure the reading comprehension of American students. 3ĭespite the high stakes, lots of kids in this country can’t read very well. They’re more likely to have behavior problems, to drop out of school and to end up in the criminal justice system. 2 Their poor reading skills make it hard for them to keep up in other subject areas. 1 Struggling readers are more likely to report feeling sad, lonely, angry, anxious and depressed. When children have trouble learning to read, it can kick off a devastating downward spiral. Reading is essential - not just for school success, but for life. Schools tell their parents: Read to them. Learning to read does not come easily to them. “Nobody else should walk away feeling like that,” she said. and to help other families in the same situation. Sonya was determined to figure out what happened with C.J. But she’d put her faith in the school system for years, and now she had a seventh grader who was reading on the level of kids nearly half his age. The adviser said the school would help C.J., and Sonya wanted to believe it. “I sobbed.” Remembering the moment during an interview brought tears to her eyes. C.J.’s adviser called Sonya in for a meeting. had moved to a new school that year, a public charter school in Nashville. She did not want this to happen to C.J.īut the schools kept telling her C.J. “I would find myself Googling words.” It was embarrassing. “Sometimes when they would have conversations, I didn’t know what they were talking about,” she said. ![]() ![]() Not just when she was reading, but when people were talking, too. She’d struggled to learn how to read, too.Īs she grew older, she says it wasn’t that she couldn’t read the words it’s that she didn’t know what a lot of the words meant. She was desperate.Īnd she knew something about how C.J. Tutoring? Private school? Those weren’t things she could afford. “I started asking myself, does he have a learning disability?” She sent a handwritten note to the school, requesting that he be tested. The three older ones had no trouble learning to read but something was different with C.J. to Amqui because she liked the school and it’s where her best friend’s son went her friend picked the kids up after school because Sonya worked late as a nurse.Ĭ.J. Test scores show most children in the school were struggling with reading. went to Amqui Elementary, a public school in Nashville, Tennessee, where 80 percent of the students were Black or Hispanic and almost all of them were from low-income families. His older sister read the Goosebumps books to him.Ĭ.J. ![]() liked the Veggie Tales stories and “The Big Friendly Giant” by Roald Dahl. Teachers and school officials told her that C.J. “Something was going on with him, but I could not figure it out,” she said. ![]() He was in first grade and he was struggling with reading. Sonya Thomas knew something wasn’t right with her son C.J. Listen to this audio documentary on the Educate podcast. ![]()
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