Early Literacy

Getting students reading at grade level is one of our state’s most urgent educational challenges.

Reading by third grade is a pivotal educational benchmark. Students who don’t learn to read by third grade can’t read to learn, thus compromising all their learning in future grades and creating an unmeetable set of demands for educators across all content areas. In Massachusetts, we have struggled to make major gains in literacy and now see students at lower levels of proficiency than 10 years ago.

Photo: Ignite Reading

State Policy Solutions

MBAE is calling on state leaders to:

  • Pass legislation requiring all districts to use evidence-based literacy instructional materials and curricula, and
  • Commit to an annual state investment for an early literacy high-dosage tutoring program for first grade students in communities with low-income rates over 50%.

Photo: Ignite Reading

A one-to-one high-dosage tutoring model whereby students receive 15 minutes of virtual tutoring every day during the school day from the same, highly trained tutor is showing impressive results. The program targets first graders who have not mastered Kindergarten reading skills and therefore have gaps in their learning. If these gaps are left unaddressed, these students cannot access first grade curricula and will likely fall further behind over the course of the school year and beyond. A Johns Hopkins University analysis of program outcomes 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; and
  • At the start of first grade, 16% of students in the program scored at or above the grade-level composite benchmark on DIBELS, an assessment of basic literacy skills, compared to 50% by the end of the school year.

In theory, over time, schools with strong classroom instruction and curricula who use high-dosage tutoring interventions to support students who have fallen behind could expect to see reading proficiency rates reach 70-80% compared to current third grade proficiency rates of just 42%.

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