MBAE Response to Elimination of MCAS as a Graduation Standard
November 5, 2024
Chiquita Rice Joins as MBAE Member
December 23, 2024
In a new paper, MBAE highlights the findings of an analysis that shows a high-dosage early literacy tutoring program for MA first graders led to significant gains in grade level reading proficiency. Citing the new outcomes data, MBAE is calling for the state to make a substantial annual investment in early literacy high-dosage tutoring for first graders with an emphasis on communities serving high numbers of students from low-income families.
The paper, High-Dosage Tutoring, a High-Impact Early Literacy Strategy, concludes that this research-backed tutoring model is the intervention we need in Massachusetts to finally make significant progress on early literacy.
Just 42% of the Commonwealth’s third graders were proficient in reading on the 2024 MCAS exams and 76% of low-income students didn’t meet the state’s proficiency bar. Not all of this can be attributed to setbacks from the pandemic. Massachusetts reading proficiency rates on the National Assessment of Educational Progress were stagnant, hovering around 50% between 2011 and 2017, and since then have plummeted.
Reading by third grade is a pivotal benchmark. Students who don’t learn to read by third grade can’t read to learn compromising their learning in future grades and creating an unmeetable set of demands for educators across all content areas.
The Johns Hopkins University evaluation of a one-to-one virtual high-dosage tutoring intervention that serves Massachusetts first graders who started the 2023/2024 school year behind in their reading skills shows tutored students grew substantially more than expected as compared to national norms, achieving 5.4 months of additional learning over the course of the year.