“I had nothing, no resources,” Defreese said. “I built the curriculum from scratch.” 

Though Defreese was the lead teacher in her 11th- and 12th-grade English classes — designing and delivering lessons, grading student work and offering feedback — she was not operating alone. Technically, she was still an apprentice. Her first year in Beech Grove was part of a partnership with local Marian University, a residency program where she’d agreed to be the “teacher of record” at the school while still receiving training and taking courses to earn her master’s degree in teaching. 

During her first year, Defreese had both a mentor teacher at the high school plus professors at Marian providing her with ongoing coaching and training.

Marian professors said the design of the program, which began in 2019, was intended to increase the skill set of new teachers by exposing them to the research on learning, but also to get teachers “on their feet” and into classrooms sooner. “We have a teacher shortage,” said Karen Wright, director of residencies and clinical experiences at Klipsch Educators College at Marian. The one-year residency, she said, “gives an opportunity for us to truly partner with our community as well as fully train our candidates.”

It covers the $21,000 tuition for a new teacher’s master’s degree, plus provides a living stipend that ranges from $18,000 to $39,000, depending on teacher qualifications.

Local schools and the university see the arrangement as a win/win: understaffed schools get qualified teachers into classrooms quickly, and new teachers get ongoing coaching and support to hone their skills.

Marian University is one of a growing number of programs overhauling how teachers get trained, moving away from short, uneven practical experiences in classrooms to something more closely resembling a medical residency. Residents do more of the day-to-day work of a licensed teacher but in a more junior position, under the supervision of more experienced teachers. 

Apprentice teachers take education courses at night and on weekends while spending their days working directly with students, through tutoring and academic intervention as well as full-time teaching. And unlike traditional programs, apprentice teachers often get paid for their time.

Though the number of residency, apprenticeship and mentorship programs is hard to quantify, experts say the model is not just in university programs, but in non-traditional, alternative certification and “” programs as well. 

Program leaders say longer residencies are happening in part due to the profession’s rising demands and changes in the field. Some residency programs focus on specific targets, like equipping teachers with the research— such as on the science of reading —  to understand how learning works; others look to create a more diverse workforce or address chronic teacher shortages. 

The apprenticeship model has promise, said Suzanne Donovan, executive director of the incubated at the National Research Council. Programs like SERP — the Strategic Education Research Partnership — are looking to add a research element to new teacher residency programs, making early teaching look much more like young doctors training in a research hospital.

“I’m convinced it’s the thing that could make education a system that continuously improves in the way that,” she said. 

New teachers now outnumber any other group

improving student teaching is one of the most efficient ways to strengthen student achievement and teacher retention overall. Over the last 30 years, novice and first-year teachers have grown to make up the of the workforce, researchers say, outnumbering teachers who’ve worked for five, 10 or any other number of years or more.

According to a 2017 analysis, about 7% of all teachers, or 245,000 out of 3.5 million, are either first-year or novice teachers. In 1987, by contrast, those just entering the field made up 3% of the teacher workforce. 

Since new teachers tend to be less effective than experienced ones, and leave in higher numbers, especially the that work in high-poverty schools, the student teaching experience becomes critical to success. Teachers in training who have positive student teaching experiences with effective, experienced mentor teachers to teach. 

But according to a 2023 report from EdResearch for Action, many state regulations come up short, offering bare minimum requirements ranging in quality. Only 27 states require at least 10 weeks of student teaching under a mentor teacher in the building; even fewer, the report says, mandate a student teacher work full-time during those weeks. Few programs set criteria for what student teaching should include. Mentor teachers often receive , and if they are paid at all, receive an average $200 to $250 stipend. 

 “The frequency and quality of support provided to teacher candidates by mentor teachers and field instructors vary significantly and are often inadequate,” researchers wrote.

“People are not paying enough attention to this issue,” Dan Goldhaber, director of the at the American Institutes for Research, told ����Ӱ��. “There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to making student teaching better.” 

Studies have shown, for example, that a for novice teachers reduced teacher attrition within the first few years. 

�ҴDZ���󲹲����’s links mentor teacher quality to how effective new teachers are once they get in front of students. While only about 5% of working teachers volunteer to be mentors, student teachers who do get highly effective mentor teachers perform substantially better once they’re in classrooms. 

“If you work with a very effective, two-standard-deviations-above-average mentor teacher, you end up looking almost like a teacher who has two years of teaching experience instead of a novice,” Goldhaber said.

But several obstacles stand in the way of higher quality training for novices, said Matthew Kraft, an education economist at Brown University. Teacher compensation continues to be a factor, and districts and universities can’t pay for long training periods like in medicine. No such thing exists for educators. 

“It’s alluring to characterize teaching as medicine, but we’re not going to have anything close to that until we have something that even approaches medical pay,” Kraft said. “Those things go together. You train many, many years to become a doctor, not only because it’s necessary, but because there are returns to that multi-year investment in your education.” 

Getting into the nitty-gritty of teaching 

Some new residency and apprenticeship programs are paying more attention to breaking down the steps of teaching. They’re spending more time on research and practical tools in the way new doctors practice the “how” while learning the “why” of treating patients. 

When professors overhauled the student teaching program at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in 2020, school of education dean Douglas Cost said they needed better measures to know whether their clinical teacher training was doing a good job preparing teachers for the classroom. Teacher licensure was the bare minimum.

“Accreditation is an important goal,” Cost said. “But it doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of teaching. Understanding the science behind learning has given us a real lever to begin thinking about what makes a good teacher.”  

Cost and colleagues adopted , an evidence-based educator curriculum focused on improving student learning. It gives new teachers specific techniques like connecting students’ prior knowledge to what they’re learning, or how to make sure all students are thinking about the material. 

“Our professors gave us a template for designing our lesson plans, based on prior knowledge, gaps in knowledge, how to get students up to speed who might have gaps,” said Sarah Cardoza, a former resident and social studies teacher at Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska. “What do you want students to know, and how do you know if they know it? It takes that simple concept and gives you a roadmap for it.” 

Cardoza said her first year as a resident teacher, her class had eight students with mandated special education support, three English language learners and several Ukrainian refugees  — a lot for a new teacher to handle. 

“I appreciated having a plan for how you are going to handle those situations when everybody’s needs are so different,” she said.

New teachers often don’t have the experience to know how to execute these techniques in a classroom full of students, said Zach Groshell, an independent coach and teacher trainer in Seattle, Washington. Giving them step-by-step specifics — like how to gather students on the rug in an organized way or how to capture attention with a simple arm gesture — might seem basic, but can make the overwhelming first days of teaching much more manageable. 

“The generalities of ‘build relationships,’ ‘have a positive classroom climate,’ ‘plan your lessons effectively,’—they’re just too nebulous and vague for new teachers to act on them,” Groshell said. “You need to get more specific.” 

A  ‘gradual release’ to full teaching responsibility 

Traditional student teaching offers new teachers two stark realities: practice lessons in controlled environments, and then full responsibility in a classroom of students. But residency models emphasize “gradual release” to full independence, especially in hard-to-staff areas like special education. 

“My first year as a teacher, I cried almost every day,” said Geri Guerrero-Summers, a special education teacher at Mariner High School in Everett, Washington. New teachers went from “you’re going to observe” to “jump right in,” she said. “Student teaching was unpaid. … It’s really a rough type of process in becoming a teacher.”

Guerrero-Summers now works as a mentor teacher with the Washington Education Association’s , the first teachers’ union to step into training and licensing teachers. Originally funded with federal pandemic relief money, the union residency launched in 2023 and has recently obtained status as a registered apprenticeship program with the U.S. Department of Labor, which comes with an investment of $3.4 million. 

“We strive to make sure our residents are classroom ready, no matter where they’re placed,” said Jim Meadows, dean and director of educator career pathways center at WEA.

Future educators begin with 18 weeks working as a paid assistant in special education classrooms, often called a paraeducator, followed by seven weeks of classes, finishing with 36 weeks of clinical rounds, slowly taking over responsibilities as full-time teachers. 

Apprentices spend time in a variety of special education settings and age groups. The residency was created to address a specific challenge, an of special education teachers in Washington state. A found that 1.5% of special ed teachers were unqualified to teach, nearly three times the state average for other types of teachers. in the state make up more than all other vacancies—including STEM teachers and English language teachers—combined. 

Gradual release has been critical for learning the detailed skills of a special educator, said current resident Beck Williams. For example, writing, reading and interpreting Individualized Education Programs, which lay out a student’s classroom supports and accommodations and their learning goals, are covered in coursework but look much different when working with families and young people.   

“In special education teacher training, there’s not enough practice with IEPs and parent interaction,” said Williams’ mentor teacher, Angela Salee. Special education teachers often have to play several roles in IEP meetings, advocating for the student’s best interest while explaining accommodations to other teachers, administrators and families. 

In Mississippi, where have a teacher shortage, alternative licensure programs like the Mississippi Teacher Corps offer two-year residencies and accompanying master’s degrees to get more teachers up to speed as quickly as possible. 

Residents jump right into classrooms and start teaching summer school. They plan lessons and figure out classroom management, all under mentors and supervisors, right away. 

“Part of the difficulty of teaching is that you can’t fully prepare someone for the classroom,” said corps director Joseph Sweeney. “So part of it is that experience they need in the classroom. You have to get them on their feet to show them what it’s like.”

Reflecting on this incongruity, we’ve come to the conclusion that to be a Black teacher in America today is to — as James Baldwin put it — “be in a rage almost all the time,” while simultaneously operating in a constant state of hope. And, though no community of any kind is or should be considered a monolith, we wanted to dedicate some time to exploring why that is through our own experiences and the experiences of Black teachers around us.

Hope

, compared to 78% of white teachers. While we can’t speak for every Black teacher, we know that for us, part of the pull to stay is the sense of activism imbued in our daily work. We know a Black educator’s presence — in the classroom, but also in the building — instills a sense of hope in our students who look like us and even those we don’t teach. Their hope gives us hope.

, compared to just 13% of white teachers. In Black traditions, we train our replacements. We know that the work we are doing is so connected to children and grandchildren who will look like our own children and grandchildren, that determining who will lead the next generation of classrooms is work that must be attended to. 

, compared to just 25% of white teachers. We believe part of the explanation behind this is our deep belief in the abilities of our students. We know that two teachers can look at the same student so differently, and that our belief in them is critical to their success. We also know that when the pandemic paused formal schooling, teachers of color had the antennae to pick up on the signals of learning happening outside of it. 

We recognized the leadership roles kids were playing: managing budgets, taking care of siblings and getting them fed. And we know how to tap into that resilience and independence to catch students up on the schooling they missed, because the alternative — to give up, to lose hope — is unacceptable.

Rage

The optimism expressed in these survey results must be tempered by recognizing it is not fueled solely by hope. It is also fueled by rage.

We know that if we leave the classroom, there may be no one left — not one Black teacher — to represent the culture and community when we’re gone. We don’t just ask. “Who’s going to teach my kids if I leave?” but also, “Who is going to support them in the racial and cultural context(s) in which they’re being educated? Who is going to challenge the misrepresentations in their curriculum? Who is going to make these spaces less anti-racist, less anti-immigrant, less anti-Black?”

And, while survey results show that Black teachers and teachers of color are seemingly more optimistic than white teachers, they still �������’t optimistic: . It’s an unthinkable but relatable paradox, especially as Black male educators, to want more people who look like us to join us in a difficult and lonely profession. K-12 education more often than not is a hostile space for Black people, and changing it from the inside out is exhausting. 

This difficult, lonely profession sometimes looks like coming to school the day and listening to complaints about the broken copy machine. It sometimes looks like facing “professionalized racism:” experiencing a racist incident that brings you back to an experience you had as a student, and grappling simultaneously with the trauma of that memory and its repetition in the moment. 

It sometimes looks like school districts claiming they want more Black teachers,but refusing to take meaningful steps to stabilize, secure and support these educators, such as through the . No one has Black teachers in their backpacks, but there are steps and models for school and district leadership teams can and must take to address both ends of the pipeline: recognition, recruitment and retention.

Organizations like the Center for Black Educator Development are certainly a source for Black teachers by providing a model and a lens for how to invite youth into the profession and how to treat them — providing safe and sustainable cultures that ignite and encourage them to show their brilliance — in order to retain them.

To be a Black teacher in the United States is to live in a state of activism and analysis fueled by both hope and rage, because the alternative is to live in a state of utter despair. It has to get better. We must lift our students as we climb ourselves, even if we are also balancing on a precipice.  We work tirelessly alongside teachers of color, who believe that it will get better, who channel their hope and their rage into fighting for every one of our students. 

Teachers who express optimism do so not because they are happy now, but because they believe deeply in what they are working toward.

In Ohio, where students who scored poorly on state reading tests had to repeat third grade for the last decade, the state legislature ended the requirement last summer in a bill that also adopted the science of reading.

In Indiana, state officials just restored mandatory retention of low-scoring third graders after a seven year absence. Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a law this month requiring students that don’t score as proficient on the state’s IREAD-3 tests to be held back in third grade, with few exceptions. The state estimates the new law will hold back 18 times as many third graders when it takes effect in 2025  — 7,500 compared to just over 400 today.

Third grade retention and science of reading are two strategies for improving reading that have . Both Ohio and Indiana joined the third grade retention movement in 2012, though Indiana later backed away before rejoining it this spring and Ohio never fully embraced it.

Both states have also seen reading scores drop on NAEP, the “nation’s report card,” even before the pandemic, then decline more after. Such results make it only natural for legislatures to shift gears, experts said.

“Third grade is obviously a critical moment,” said American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Robert Pondiscio. “There’s nothing to be gained by giving kids more of what hasn’t worked. It should trigger different, intensive efforts.”

He and others like Timothy Shanahan, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, said the key is not just adopting something that sounds good, but making sure it changes classroom instruction. 

Both Ohio and Indiana seem to be covering those bases, with more teacher training, new textbooks, and other student supports. Whether those are enough and how well they are used by teachers, schools and parents is still to be determined. 

Right now, the desire for immediate change, particularly in Indiana, is clear.

“About one in five students in Indiana can’t read effectively by the end of third grade,” said Indiana State Rep. Linda Rogers, one of the law’s authors. “This is not acceptable. If a child hasn’t learned basic reading skills by that point in school, they’re going to struggle to learn almost every other subject.”

Indiana education superintendent Katie Jenner told the legislature the state can’t have 14,000 third graders scoring below proficient on Indiana’s IREAD-3 test, as happened in 2023, without taking real steps to catch them up.

“The students who are just moving on are never passing. Ever. Ever,” Jenner said. “It’s hard to say that, but it’s honest.”

Indiana’s new law also requires more testing of second and third graders to identify struggling readers and for more interventions, such as l summer reading classes after second and third grade for students who are behind.

Jenner said adding these interventions and the retention mandate is a natural second step in the state’s literacy plan after focusing on having the right reading lessons through the science of reading and training teachers to teach them last year.

Requiring students to repeat third grade after not passing reading tests became law in California in 1998, rising  to national prominence after Florida adopted the policy in 2002 under then-Gov. Jeb Bush. Since then, , though with differing policies on which students – such as special education, English Language Learners or students who have already repeated a grade – are exempt.

All shared a similar reasoning: Third grade is where students usually shift from ”learning to read to reading to learn,” or needing to read well enough they can read and learn other subjects. Students need to master reading by then, backers argued, or they will fall behind in 4th grade and beyond or may never learn to read. Mandatory retention also gives students, parents and teachers a deadline for taking reading seriously.

The strategy has promising early results, withSome of the most dramatic results came in Indiana under an earlier version of third grade retention that was dropped in 2017, a Brown University study showed.

But opponents in multiple states raised objections each time bills were introduced, usually citing studies that show smaller gains and psychological damage to students who are held back because of teasing, feelings of failure and being separated from friends. The studies have also noted Black and Hispanic students are usually held back at higher rates than white students.

Indiana was an early state in the third grade retention movement when former state superintendent Tony Bennett pushed for it in 2010. The legislature did not agree, but the state board of education mandated it with an administrative rule in 2012.

The Indiana Department of Education eased that requirement in 2017-18, telling schools to consider student performance in all subjects, even if not scoring well in reading, to decide if a student should move to fourth grade.

Third grade reading also had big changes in 2012 in Ohio, when then-Gov. John Kasich won approval from Ohio’s state legislature for his “Third Grade Reading Guarantee” that required more tests to identify students having trouble reading and for schools to hold back students who score poorly.

Unlike Indiana, which always made proficiency the threshold for promotion, Ohio set a lower score that needed to be raised over time. That set off constant debates each time the state school board had to decide how much to increase the score. Over time, the score crept higher but too many board members had reservations for the needed score to ever reach the proficiency level.

About 3,600 students were held back each year under Ohio’s retention law before several Republicans joined Democrats in opposing it last year.

“Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to literacy that currently exists, (a change) will give local and parental control to districts when deciding to retain a child,” Republican Rep. Gayle Manning told legislators in pushing an opposition bill last year.

In the end, a joint House and Senate committee chose to give parents the final say in holding back their children as part of a compromise state budget bill. Though many Ohio Senate Republicans wanted to keep the retention requirement, they relented because the bill included the shift to the science of reading and a requirement that students keep receiving extra reading help until they can catch up.

“I wasn’t in favor of it (ending retention), but we put some things in that I wanted,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Andrew Brenner, also a leading backer of science of reading. “I think that will help immensely to get kids back on track over the next couple of years.”

The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce does not yet know how many students avoided retention this fall because of the law change.

In Indiana, attempts by Democrats to give parents the final say in whether a child has to repeat third grade, like Ohio decided last year, were voted down by Republicans. Attempts to delay the law until the state could see how science of reading changes affect scores also were voted down.

The examined data from 2011-12 to 2016-17 and found that students who were retained in third grade scored about 18 points higher in English language arts and math in fourth grade than low-performing peers who were not retained. The gains continued through seventh grade, though at a slower rate. 

“I was surprised at the huge … positive effect,” said NaYoung Hwang, an assistant professor of education policy at the University of New Hampshire, who co-authored the report with Cory Koedel, a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Missouri.

The study is unusual because it compares third graders who were retained with peers who scored just high enough to advance. These groups are expected to be statistically similar, Hwang added. 

Despite this progress, the number of Indiana students held back after third grade has been declining for years, sliding from 2.4%, or 1,535 students, in 2013 to 1.25%, or 762, in 2016, according to Hwang. 

Those 762 students were among 3,500 who did not pass the Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determinations, also known as IREAD3, in 2016 after being allowed to retake the exam over the summer. This year, nearly 5,000 students failed the test. State officials did not answer a request for information about how many of them repeated third grade.

The policy “hasn’t been uniformly applied anymore,” said Bob Behning, a state representative who chairs the education committee.

The study found no increases in absenteeism or discipline problems among students who were held back and showed positive benefits regardless of the student’s race, gender or family socio-economic status, Hwang added. 

She acknowledged that research focused on sixth- or eighth-graders who were retained has found lower graduation and higher dropout rates. “We need more studies and years” to determine if third-graders who are held back would follow this pattern, she added. 

The Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determinations, also known as IREAD3, requires third graders to score 446 or higher to pass. Students who don’t must be offered remediation and a chance to retake the test during the summer. State law also allows for what are called good-cause exemptions, which allow some third graders who don’t hit the required score to advance anyway. These include English learners, special education students and those who have already been retained twice.

Hwang said she undertook the study because retention is a much-debated policy. More than half the states allow or require schools to retain low-performing students after third grade, but the number actually held back seems to be shrinking. In Florida, for example, the retention rate went from 15% in 2002 to just 6% in 2010, according to a by the RAND Corporation.

In Tennessee, where a new law threatened to hold back thousands of third graders, who scored low enough were actually held back. That’s 1.2%. Nearly 4,400 students were granted waivers to advance to the fourth grade after their parents appealed.

Reading experts said the research on retention is mixed. “We’re not seeing long-term benefits,” said Danielle Dennis, dean of the University of Rhode Island’s College of Education. “There’s been very little research [tracking students] into high school.”

She wondered if gains in Indiana came, in part, because such a small percentage of students were held back. Paying for an additional year of school and offering remediation would be harder with a significantly larger group, she said. 

“This [new report] gives us new info, not all the info,” Dennis said. 

“Overall, the weight of research evidence continues to be that there are not long-term benefits of retaining students,” said Nell Duke, executive director of the Center for Early Literacy Success and a professor of education and psychology at the University of Michigan. 

However, she said research shows the benefits of summer programs and small-group reading interventions, noting that these measures can be used even when students are not retained. 

Even the students’ gains in seventh grade may not be enough to justify retention, she added, as funding an additional year of school, pulling children away from their peers and possibly increasing their chances of dropping out may not be worth an extra 7 points in reading. 

“I would characterize retention as not a high-priority policy move to improve long-term literacy. There are ways to spend funds and energy that are likely to have more lasting results,” Duke added. 

She also disputed the notion that the end of third grade marks a key change for students from learning to read to reading to learn: “Today’s standards expect children to learn from reading well before third grade, and students can continue to develop as readers, with proper instruction, well after fourth grade.”

Behning noted that Indiana has shifted its priorities about reading instruction in the past two years. A law this year created an approved science of reading curriculum list, offered literacy support for elementary schools where fewer than 70% of students pass IREAD3 and provides grants to teachers and schools that improve students’ reading skills. 

In 2022, the state and the Lilly Endowment combined to put together a in literacy education, the state’s largest expenditure in that area. The funds, in part, helped pay for instructional coaches in about 200 elementary schools, as well as targeted support for students who need the most help improving reading skills, and offered a stipend of up to $1,200 to K-3 teachers who participate in professional development in the science of reading. 

“​​In the midst of the pandemic — even without a learning disability —  you can’t get a 6-year-old to sit in front of a laptop,” said Tamara Miles, Faith’s mother. “Her attention span is not that long.”

Now in third grade, Faith is among the nearly 3,900 students in the Metro Nashville Public Schools — and thousands more throughout Tennessee — who risk failing the state reading test this spring.  That means they could be impacted by a — taking effect this year — that requires proficiency to move onto the fourth grade.

Pressure has been building on state lawmakers to amend the law as testing season approaches next month. Parents, advocates and educators say it’s unfair to base the decision on one assessment, especially for students who were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit. But state officials and Republican legislators argue it’s wrong to promote students who �������’t ready.

“We’re living with this COVID two years for the next 12 years of our life, trying to get these kids caught up,” Rep. Scott Cepicky, chairman of the House Education Instruction Committee, said last week during a hearing on the issue. “We cannot keep doing this and condemning these kids to a life of possibly poverty, incarceration, drug abuse, alcoholism, teen pregnancy, gang violence.”

Legislators are currently considering Cepicky’s amendment to tweak the law to allow students who score in the “approaching expectations” range to advance to fourth grade if they score in the 50th percentile on a literacy “screener” test. The law already offers opportunities to retake the state test as well as summer school, tutoring and ultimately, an appeals process. But some district leaders are still opposed. 

“Some of our parents will not take advantage of the resources that you’ve set in place,” Clint Satterfield, director of the Trousdale County Schools, told lawmakers during another hearing last month. “They will choose to take retention and that is sad. That’s an unintended consequence.”

Cepicky’s amendment would also require students who are retained in K-3 to receive tutoring. That the law didn’t already include such a provision, he said, was one of its “shortcomings.” The Senate Education Committee passed similar legislation, but it would require students to receive tutoring in fourth grade if they pass the screener test.

J.C. Bowman, executive director and CEO of Professional Educators of Tennessee, called the proposed amendment a “positive step” because it bases retention on more than a single test score. But with such a short timeline, he said districts need to ensure parents understand all the options.

Seeking ‘adequate growth’

State lawmakers approved the 2021 legislation — officially called the Tennessee Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act — alongside a complementary law that overhauls how the state teaches students to read. Districts must now use a phonics-based curriculum, and the state has spent the last two summers training teachers in the so-called “science of reading.” 

But Sonya Thomas, executive director of Nashville Propel, a parent advocacy group, questioned why schools didn’t have children repeat kindergarten instead of waiting until third grade.

“At that point, school districts knew who was behind,” she said, “What have they been doing since then?”

As the law currently stands, students who score in the “approaching” range — and don’t reach proficiency when they retake the test — can attend summer school or participate in tutoring in fourth grade. In summer school, they must have 90% attendance and make progress in reading.

Those who score “below expectations” have to participate in both tutoring and summer school. But some question whether six weeks of summer learning camp will be enough to prepare students for the demands of fourth grade.

“It’s not just like we’re going to eat popsicles and play outside,” said Jean Hesson, elementary supervisor for the Sumner County Schools. But she said it’s also unrealistic to expect a student who is two years behind to reach grade level just because of summer school. “We would love to see adequate growth.”

Director Satterfield said even if families take advantage of all the opportunities for extra help, their children might still be too far behind.

“Are we really going to fail those students?” he asked the committee.

Retention research

Lawmakers in other states have been asking similar questions. Retention opponents in Ohio, including the Ohio Education Association, unsuccessfully pushed for of that state’s law last fall. In Michigan, however,  both the House and Senate have passed that ends third grade retention Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is expected to sign. 

When the Michigan law went into effect last school year, only 1% of students eligible for retention were ultimately held back, from Katharine Strunk, a Michigan State University professor tracking the law’s implementation. She argues that the costs of making students repeat a grade outweigh the benefits and that retention predominantly affects low-income and minority students. 

But former Mississippi state chief Carey Wright and former literacy director Kymyona Burk told Tennessee lawmakers that retention was one important trigger that led to what some have called a In 2019, Mississippi was the only state to show gains in fourth grade reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. 

They highlighted a recent Boston University showing students who repeated third grade in 2014-15 had higher English language arts scores in sixth grade. ExcelinEd, an advocacy organization where Burk is now senior policy fellow for early literacy, commissioned the report. 

“Retention will have a far greater positive impact than moving along a student who just isn’t ready,” they wrote in a recent op-ed for ����Ӱ�� about the research.

Another found that Indiana fourth graders who repeated third grade scored higher on state math and reading tests than third graders who barely passed. Retained students continued to outperform those who weren’t retained through seventh grade and were not more likely to have problems with absenteeism or behavior.

Some experts acknowledge that retention can lead to short-term gains, but warn it has  serious consequences later. 

In a chapter for a on education policy and literacy, Gabriel DellaVecchia, a researcher at the University of Michigan, reviewed evidence from linking retention in Texas to higher high school dropout rates — especially among Black and Hispanic girls.  

“If their grades go up in sixth grade, but they hate school so much that they drop out the moment they turn 16, it is difficult to label the policy as a success,” he told ����Ӱ��.

He added that when states like Tennessee provide tutoring and summer school,  in addition to improving reading instruction, it’s hard to isolate the benefits of retention itself. 

“Those same supports could just as easily be provided to a fourth grader,” he said, “without removing the child from their peer group or stamping them with the stigma of being retained.”

Even those with students not yet in third grade have been following the debate.

“It’s like the biggest talk in the city,” said Teaira King of Nashville, whose daughter, 6-year-old Journi Wilson, attends Purpose Preparatory Academy, a charter school. 

Based on her own experience, King agreed that schools shouldn’t promote students if they can’t read. But she’s  not in favor of retaining students if all they get is a repeat of previous instruction. 

She didn’t realize she was a struggling reader until she got to college. She eventually dropped out.

“I don’t want my kids to feel the way I felt when I graduated and I couldn’t read,” she said. “I wasn’t ready for the world.”

While education has made great gains in so many areas, progress remains impeded by old, disproven misconceptions, especially when it comes to one of the most essential, fundamental skills: the ability to read.

A last week by ExcelinEd and Wheelock Educational Policy Center at Boston University should end the debate over the value of holding back students who are not reading at grade level by the end of third grade.

This study reinforces what teachers and families already know: If early intervention and support for struggling readers are not enough for a child to read at grade level before fourth grade, providing more time in third grade dramatically increases their odds of succeeding in school and in life. 

We were both fortunate to be part of a reading revolution in Mississippi. After decades of ranking near the bottom nationally in reading scores, Mississippi passed the in 2013.

Six years later, the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress results of this comprehensive policy. During those six years, fourth graders showed a of 10 points — the equivalent of an entire grade level — on the NAEP reading exam. Mississippi was the only state in the entire nation to show reading gains that year.

Any successful recipe has several complementary ingredients, and it is no different for Mississippi’s reading policies. Making sure that teachers are trained in the science of reading is critical, as are early screening and intervention for the youngest students and dedicated reading coaches in schools. The curriculum must be phonics-based, and families must be included every step of the way.

But like any recipe, removing or diluting just one ingredient can affect everything.

Many states that have posted reading gains, including Mississippi, provide students with additional time in third grade if assessments show they are not ready to read at a higher level.

Third grade retention is a last resort if years of intervention and support have not been enough. Why third grade? Because that students who are not reading at grade level when they enter fourth grade are not prepared for a critical transition — reading to learn — and have dramatically lower odds of succeeding in school or even graduating.

While there should be exemptions for some students, including English learners, and opportunities to move on to the fourth grade by retaking assessments, teachers and families involved in a child’s early and formative years understand that retention will have a far greater positive impact than moving along a student who just isn’t ready.

But anecdotal evidence is not enough to build education policy on. A new by the Wheelock Educational Policy Center highlights the benefits of ensuring children enter fourth grade only when they are prepared. The research focused on students who scored within 20 points of the passing threshold in the third grade. By the time they were in sixth grade, these students on average scored in the 20^th percentile for English language arts. But those who were retained in third grade scored on average around the 62^nd percentile when they were in sixth grade.

Clearly, ELA scores for students who were retained In Mississippi were substantially higher than for comparable children who were just barely promoted, especially among Black and Hispanic kids.

And, contrary to misconceptions, there was no impact on attendance in sixth grade or on other outcomes, including being identified for special education.

“Mississippi’s test-based promotion policy led to substantial and sustained improvement in literacy outcomes for Mississippi students who repeated the third grade in 2015-16,” the report concludes. “The positive magnitude of this finding is very large and, given similar results in other contexts, suggests that this may be a policy intervention other states should consider.”

Last year’s NAEP results were a dramatic call to action with decades of reading gains erased after the upheaval of the pandemic. Nationally, student reading performance is at its lowest since the 1990s, with a third of students in fourth and eighth grade not reading at grade level.

And while reading scores also dropped slightly in Mississippi, our state remained above the national average — a further testament to not just our policies, but also the dedicated teachers and families making those policies work. 

Success is never final, and we know that our friends and neighbors in Mississippi and the rest of the nation all want the best for each child and student.

It is time for every state to follow the evidence. That means focusing on prevention and intervention, but also considering the full suite of proven reading policies — including retention — to ensure the youngest readers have the opportunity to learn and thrive throughout school and for the rest of their lives.

These are some of the incentives and supports aimed at preventing an exodus of principals and school administrators taking on pandemic stressors and the nation’s divisive climate. 

Focused on problem solving, self-care and leadership skills, a handful of nonprofits run by experienced educators have launched support and training programs to aid principals, particularly leaders of color who are underrepresented in the field and experiencing more than their peers. 

Organizations are also recognizing a window of opportunity: recruiting and retaining principals of color to better match and support an increasingly diverse student population. Roughly of U.S. public school students are Indigenous, Black, Hispanic/Latino, Asian or multiracial, while about . 

“‘How could this be done differently? How can we support you?’ We’re not hearing that conversation. It is ‘yes you did this, now do this on top of what you’re doing.’ And I think that is driving a lot of people out because you don’t feel like you can be human,” said TaraShaun Cain, executive director of the Black Principals Network. 

The group is one of several support networks that launched during the pandemic, as many leaders — faced with hostility from parents, death within their family, health concerns and working alongside mental health challenges — have said they may .

One new training is taking aim at the underlying cause of stress educators witness in tapped-out peers: The current role of principal has become unsustainable. And if reimagining school structures isn’t a part of training for the next generation of principals, school systems will likely continue to fail and overtax leaders.

Recognizing the emotional toll of leading schools in the current climate, the partnered with BetterHelp, an online mental health service platform, to provide leaders free phone, text or video counseling. 

Several are extending support beyond seated principals. Recruiting the next generation of school leaders is becoming more urgent, as one New York teacher leader noticed. 

“There’s a lot more hesitancy,” said Margarita Lopez, a teacher and instructional coach for other educators at Urban Assembly Maker, a career and technical school in New York City. 

Lopez, who does not know anyone else currently interested in leadership, is pursuing the shift to leadership out of frustration, eager to change current systems that have left teachers unsupported, without meaningful feedback or professional development. 

“I saw it as a call to action for myself…I’ve seen a lot of people that I’ve taught with leave education altogether,” Lopez said. “I’m seeing more of that, than people wanting to stay in education and become a school leader.”

To make the role more attractive, at least one program is baking in opportunities to reshape school design while bearing the cost of training to make the career accessible and enticing to a more diverse pool of applicants.

Launched by Springpoint, a nonprofit dedicated to reimagining high school, and Boston-based philanthropy The Barr Foundation, the Transformative Leaders Massachusetts program is recruiting to better reflect the state’s diverse student population. 

For example, they may look to recruit multilingual leaders to support the state’s immigrant families, particularly from Brazil, Cape Verde the Azores and mainland Portugal. Massachusetts has the in the country.

The tuition-free leadership program will include coaching on how to encourage staff and student identity development, competency-based learning, and managing teams — thinking through the system and volume of direct reports that principals manage daily, for example.

About 10 teachers will begin the pilot two-year development program this summer — each participant will earn $20,000 stipends on top of their existing school salaries.

“There has been an addition of work without compensation. And for us, this is really a statement of valuing their time… this should not be something that educators go into debt for. This should be something that is a pathway that feels clear and open,” said Lauren Bassi, director of leadership and school design at Springpoint and former English teacher.

Breaking down the financial barrier for leaders to enter the profession while creating support has also been a priority for the , child of the popular leadership training program New Leaders, Clark Atlanta University and Morehouse College. 

New principal fellows can complete a certificate-only program for $10,000, or earn a Master’s simultaneously for $20,000, and receive support to apply for grant funding. Fellows can pursue licensed positions in 37 states and Washington, D.C., thanks to recent state approvals, and will ultimately join a New Leaders alumni network of over 8,000. 

“When we talk about fundamentally changing what is happening in education in our country, this is what we mean: transforming the system so that every school is led by an equity-focused principal with the highest expectations for every child,” J. Fidel Turner, Dean of the Clark Atlanta School of Education, said in a press release.

New Leaders’s latest fellowship will focus on building the pipeline of principals of color to better reflect and serve student populations. Principals of color create better academic outcomes for students of color — who make up the nationally — and are more effective than their peers at recruiting and retaining teachers of color, according to .

The next few years could present an opportunity to better diversify the field and encourage better outcomes for students of color, , said New Leaders CEO Jean Desravines.

“We are not saying that we should transition out existing white principals. What we’re saying is there’s a recognition that there will be significant turnover in the field, a mass exodus because of mental health issues, because of COVID, because of the political environment,” Desravines told ����Ӱ��. “It will be a missed opportunity if we are not being intentional and strategic about how we build the pipeline in a way that ensures there’s far greater representation than there’s been in the past.” 

Desravines added that principals, particularly those without supportive district leadership, have been feeling “incredibly lonely.” There are about 11 and 9% of Black and Latino principals nationally, respectively. Some may be the only leader of color in their district or county — experiencing a mix of racist hostility or taking on more emotional labor to support marginalized students than their peers. 

Black Principal Network’s Executive Director Cain, for instance, built her career in her hometown of Chicago alongside many Black educators and leaders. But she knows that some, in places like Madison, Wisconsin, are the only ones in their district or county fiercely advocating for the “babies that look like me.” 

It’s become necessary to share strategies across state lines, so that leaders who would previously have never crossed paths, can share lessons learned like how to advance an equity initiative or deal with a combative school board. 

“There’s [professional] development needed, but what I learned is there are some internal obstacles that our guys face, too,” said Keith Brooks, founder of the National Fellowship for Black and Latino Male Educators, the group offering free access to BetterHelp therapy. “Imposter syndrome — just understanding their worth or value, or internalized racism, and being able to show up as their authentic self… that was one of the biggest things that was getting in our guys’ ways.” 

The Black Principal’s Network recognized a similar need near the beginning of the pandemic and widespread protests against racism and police violence. What began as a Facebook group has morphed into an online community of over 350; principals participate in self-care, sustainability, and self-discovery programming. 

While the Fellowship and Network specifically advocate for principals of color, the strategies and support offer a roadmap for the broader population of leaders. 

“Sometimes you feel like being vulnerable or taking time means that you are abandoning, or it is a sign of weakness…we have to change that narrative,” Cain said. “We have to create a space where our leaders can actually get refilled and be recharged beyond what we have right now.”

Charlotte Collins was a kindergartner in name only last year — enrolled in a San Antonio charter school, but not “super participating” in remote learning, her mother said.

“Having a kindergartner sit at a computer to do online school was not a thing I was willing to make her do,” said Alison Collins.

But she didn’t want her daughter, who is still behind in reading, to repeat the grade either. With a November birthday, Charlotte is already one of the oldest students in her first grade class.

“Then she would be almost two years older than her peers,” Collins said. “She didn’t get a fair shake.”

The injustices stirred by the pandemic prompted some policy experts to suggest early on that holding kids back — “retention” in education parlance —  would be a good option for students who fell behind. Collins’s home state, Texas, was among five that passed legislation this year to make it easier for parents to request their children repeat the grade they were in 2020-21.

But a review of data obtained by ����Ӱ��, supported by interviews with parents, researchers and district officials, suggests that families largely rejected this emergency option. Knowledge of the laws sometimes didn’t trickle down to parents and others counted on students getting extra support through tutoring, summer school or small group instruction. 

“​​Kids have been through enough these last two years,” said Gabriel DellaVecchia, a researcher at the University of Michigan who has studied retention laws. “I think families recognize that, and don’t want their children to endure any additional trauma.”

In Florida, one of the states that passed a one-year, pandemic-related retention law, the Miami-Dade district — with over 326,000 students in K-12 last year — received just 11 parent requests to hold kids back, said Gisela Feild, administrative director of data management. In the Hillsborough County district, only five parents asked that their child repeat last year’s grade, according to Terry Connor, chief academic officer. 

While the number of parent requests was not always available, it’s clear that retention was not widely used in some districts. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, retained less than 1 percent of students before the pandemic and held back even fewer this fall — 266 out of 286,027 students in first through eighth grade, according to data obtained by ����Ӱ�� through open records requests. And in Newark, New Jersey’s largest district, the retention rate has dropped from less than 3 percent before the pandemic to less than 2 percent.

A new poll from the National Parents Union suggests that even if such legislation had been more widespread, most parents would have balked at the opportunity. In a sample of 739 parents questioned by Echelon Insights, a public opinion research firm, 81 percent said they would not have asked schools to retain children experiencing learning loss. 

Holding students back wasn’t very popular among administrators either. Less than 10 percent of 957 principals favored retaining students in a spring 2020 RAND Corp. . When the researchers checked back in the fall, only 1 percent responded that they were retaining more students than in 2019-20.

But now that students with gaps in both academic and social skills have returned to their classrooms, some educators are changing their tune.

“The biggest struggle we’re seeing is with second graders,” said Lee Ann Wentzel, superintendent of the Ridley School District, outside Philadelphia. Many were kindergartners when schools closed down for the pandemic. Re-adjusting to the routines of school, she said, “gets in the way of the learning.”

‘The modern circumstances of COVID’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was the first to sign in early June allowing parents of students in the elementary grades to request that their children repeat last year. By July, governors in California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas had followed suit.

But the push in those states — home to seven of the nation’s 10 largest districts — came despite showing retention doesn’t have lasting benefits and can actually contribute to students dropping out. Lorrie Shepard, an education professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, called it an “ill-fitting way of thinking that you’re individualizing instruction.”

Sociologists, she said, have found the stigma of being overage in a grade is one factor that can push a student out of school, and among teens, the need to work can pull them away — pressures that fall on low-income, Black and Hispanic students.

Those who support the measures say the unique circumstances of the pandemic justify the extreme response. Patricia Morgan, executive director of JerseyCAN and one of 18 advocates who for the option in New Jersey, said opponents of retaining students shouldn’t treat past studies “as gospel.”

Retention, she said, should be “looked at again under the modern circumstances of COVID and this global lockdown.”

One of the more provocative came from Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, who argued that Title I elementary schools keep students in the same grade they were in when the pandemic began.

Petrilli acknowledged the poor returns from previous research, noting that retention “rarely helps students catch up.” He proposed instead that districts combine individualized learning plans and tutoring to get students back to their appropriate grade level by the end of the year. He added in an email that it’s “a shame” districts haven’t tried this.

But at least one is implementing his recommended mix of review and acceleration.

In the Ridley district, three students who would have been first graders this year split their day between kindergarten, where they work on social skills, and first grade, where they participate in language arts lessons. A fourth student is repeating sixth grade. The results, Wentzel said, are mixed. 

“We’re really trying to target what the child’s needs are,” Wentzel said. “I don’t want to refer to it as retention.”

‘Glued to their phones’

Teachers, however, �������’t shy about suggesting many of their students could have benefited from repeating last year.

“I think there are a lot of students who should have been held back,” said Ferlencia Staten, a literacy specialist at Gulfton Secondary, part of the YES Prep charter network in Houston. Assessments, she said, show English learners have lost literacy skills, likely because they were using their home language more during remote learning. Some have been placed in remedial classes.

She remembers teaching virtually last year while students had Netflix playing in the background.

“These kids were glued to their phones for almost two years,” she said, adding that some now sit in class with an AirPod in one ear. “It’s hard [for them] to sit in a classroom for 90 minutes.”

The results of a small survey of educators conducted for ����Ӱ��, in partnership with , a company that provides resources to teachers of English learners, echo Staten’s concerns. Twenty-two percent said they recommended some students repeat last year, and nearly 40 percent said they now have students in their classes that they think should have been held back. About half of the sample of 669 educators, made up of teachers and tutors that use the company’s curriculum and assessment materials, work in the U.S.

In some districts where few parents opted to hold their children back, retention rates nonetheless rose above pre-pandemic figures. In Hillsborough County, the 2.3 percent retention rate is higher than in the previous three years. Connor, the district’s chief academic officer, attributed the jump to learning loss.

“The pandemic has contributed to more students not meeting minimum performance criteria due to interruption in instruction,” he said. “This has led to increases in course failures and less opportunities for students to meet graduation requirements.”

In Houston, more than 5 percent of K-12 students are repeating a grade this fall, compared to around 3 percent before the pandemic. But the district was unable to provide data on the number of parent requests.

Having ‘academic successes’

Not all parents thought retention was a bad idea. In the National Parents Union poll, about 100 of the 263 parents who had the option of retention said they took it. The sample is too small to be nationally representative, but it shows some parents thought their children should get another shot to do well instead of spending the year playing catch up.

Los Angeles mother Tracey Pontelle felt her son Aaron needed to be “socialized back into school.” She saw the chance for him to repeat first grade as an opportunity to repair damage left by a disrupted school year.

Pontelle did what she could to make remote learning as engaging as possible last year, but Aaron, who has ADHD, wasn’t responding. He would focus for about five to 10 minutes at a time.

“It was just tears and throwing things,” she said. “Academically, he wasn’t reading, not even attempting to read.”

She said she received “zero pushback” from her son’s school, Dixie Canyon Community Charter, when she asked that he repeat first grade. He was even able to get the same teacher — making it feel as though the 2020-21 school year almost didn’t happen. Aaron wasn’t initially sold on the idea, but that changed when a friend from down the street turned up in the same class.

A few weeks after school started this fall, he was reading small words. Then he read his mother an entire “decodable” story — a text for beginning readers — about frogs and bats in a pond.

“He’s seeing that he’s having these academic successes,” she said. “He’s proud of himself.”

In Aaron’s case, his parents were able to choose whether their son repeated last year. That’s the way DellaVecchia, at the University of Michigan, thinks it should be — and not just because of the pandemic. He’s writing a book about third grade retention laws, including the one in Michigan, where even if a family doesn’t want their child retained, superintendents have the final word. 

“I don’t like the fact that it’s the government that tells [parents], ‘We’re going to retain your kid,’” he said.

He’s among those who argue the pandemic didn’t put a pause on students’ progress. 

“This idea that you can’t learn later or get caught up is false,” he said. “The kids did learn something. They weren’t vegetables.”

Lead Image: Getty Images