North Carolina Early Childhood Foundations’s (NCECF) latest report dives into how North Carolina can create more equitable access to high-quality literacy instruction. This is critical because, as the U.S. Treasury Department regularly reminds us, “education is the bedrock of our country and economy, and policies that raise the quality and amount of education for underserved children boost productivity for the country and each state.”

The ability to read is a core component of this bedrock, and North Carolina’s school report card data show that at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, only 51% of eighth-grade students could read and comprehend text at a proficiency level appropriate for their grade. This means that half of all high school students will need help engaging in grade-level material across all subjects and will be underprepared for postsecondary pathways. 

Unequal burden of low reading proficiency

Blaming this on pandemic learning loss in our search for solutions will send us down the wrong pathway. Eighth-grade reading proficiency was similarly low in the year before the pandemic. Only 56% of eighth-grade students ended the 2018-19 academic year at grade-level proficiency in reading.

Additionally, when proficiency scores are broken down by race, ethnicity, and economic status, we can see that Black, American Indian, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged eighth-grade students are the least likely to be reading at grade level. As you can see below, in 2023, only 35% of Black, 38% of American Indian, 38% of Hispanic, and 37% of economically disadvantaged eighth-grade students were proficient readers. In comparison, White, Asian, and not economically disadvantaged students were significantly more likely to be proficient readers while still having much room for advancement: 64% of White, 79% of Asian, and 66% of not economically disadvantaged students were grade-level proficient.

Importance of early childhood literacy

Educators can improve these eighth-grade outcomes by intervening in the earliest grades with high-quality reading instruction that is matched to students’ developmental needs. Ideally, the highest level of intervention would occur before third-grade because, after third-grade, teachers spend less time teaching students how to read and more time teaching students how to gather information using their reading skills. Additionally, the state mandates grade retention for all students who don’t pass the end-of-third-grade reading proficiency test. 

North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) state-wide school report card data indicates that at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, approximately 23% of third-grade students attending traditional elementary schools were slated to repeat third-grade due to low reading proficiency. Twenty-three percent amounts to over 20,000 students repeating third-grade. 

Consequences of grade retention

There are two very troubling consequences to this high level of grade retention. The first is that grade retention has a scarring effect on high school and postsecondary completion. For example, retention in primary grades is associated with:

• Reduced odds of completing high school by about 60%
• Reduced odds of entering college or university by 45%
• Reduced odds of obtaining a bachelor’s degree by 64% 

The second troubling consequence is that the burden of grade retention falls much more heavily on racially marginalized and economically disadvantaged students. DPI does not report grade retention rates disaggregated by student characteristics, but we can get a sense of the size of the disparities by looking at retention rates in racially and economically segregated schools. The figure below shows that, at the end of the 2022-23 academic year, schools with mostly Black students retained an average of 41% of their third-graders, compared to 20% retained in schools where most students were White. Similarly, 36% of third-graders were retained in high-poverty schools compared to only 18% retained in low-poverty schools.

Interventions for economically disadvantaged students 

NCECF calls on policymakers and educators at all levels of the system to ensure that children who most need it receive high-quality, individually tailored reading instruction necessary to meet the state’s proficiency standards. As many have noted, there is no more crucial shared task than developing all children’s basic literacy skills, starting from the first days of school.

North Carolina continues to invest in ensuring that children recover learning lost during pandemic school closures and that literacy instruction is aligned with the science of reading to give children the best chance of developing strong literacy skills. During this time, it is critical that N.C. also invests in educational resource equity to ensure that children who have historically received the fewest educational resources and had the poorest educational outcomes receive the quality and intensity of reading instruction needed to become proficient readers.  

As newly elected Superintendent Mo Green makes decisions about how to target literacy investments, it is essential to note that racial and ethnic disparities are strongly associated with economic disparities. This means that both can be narrowed by ensuring that economically disadvantaged children are taught by the highest quality teachers. Specifically, the outcomes for economically disadvantaged students are closely associated with the outcomes of Black, Hispanic, and American Indian students, and the outcomes for not economically disadvantaged students are closely associated with the outcomes for White and Asian students, as shown below.

All efforts must be made to ensure that children who enter school with the lowest reading skills access the highest quality reading instruction. This is not currently the case in schools today. As detailed in our report, children who enter kindergarten with the weakest literacy skills are among those least likely to have access to the highest quality, individually tailored literacy instruction. This has high individual and social costs because students who don’t become proficient readers “are all too likely to become our nation’s lowest income, least-skilled, least-productive, and most costly citizens.” 

Widening of school-level disparities

Insight into the role of schools in preventing and narrowing disparities can be gained from looking at whether racial, ethnic, and economic disparities narrow, stay the same, or widen between kindergarten and the third-grade. Figures 7.3 and 7.4, shown below, enable you to compare disparities at kindergarten entry and at the end of third-grade, and see that a stark racially and economically patterned gap emerges. Figure 7.3 shows the percentage of students in each school who score as being ready for kindergarten, and Figure 7.4 shows the percentage of third-grade students who are reading proficient.

There is a clear shift in the distribution of schools from Figure 7.3 to Figure 7.4 based on racial composition and economic disadvantage. At kindergarten entry, school racial composition and economic disadvantage are somewhat, but not strongly, associated with kindergarten readiness. However by the end of third-grade, mostly White and low-poverty schools are significantly more likely to have higher levels of reading proficiency, and mostly Black and high-poverty schools are significantly more likely to have lower levels of reading proficiency.

This dramatic widening of Black-White disparities from kindergarten to third-grade is consistent with the state superintendent’s August 2024 report to the State Board of Education, which showed that a Black-White gap emerges as early as between the beginning and end of students’ kindergarten year. The superintendent reported that at the beginning of kindergarten, 36% of White students scored as ready for core instruction, and a similar 32% of Black students scored as ready for core instruction. However, by the end of the academic year, 81% of White students scored as ready for core instruction, but a significantly lower 61% of Black students scored as ready for core instruction. The beginning and end of kindergarten scores for all subgroups of students are shown below.

Shifting toward equitable literacy

North Carolina legislators and NC-DPI have taken the first steps in improving literacy outcomes across the state by investing in building the capacity of kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers to align their instruction with the Science of Reading. Now they need to take the next steps and ensure that the children who are most dependent on their schools and teachers for their developing reading skills access the most skilled teachers and receive the highest quality literacy instruction. As the Center for Racial Equity in Education detailed in their 2019 report, “race, [ethnicity, and economic disadvantage] condition students’ access to educational resources and opportunities, and therefore, has been and remains a present and powerful predictor of every measure of student success.”      

In North Carolina, resource equity aligns with NC’s Excellent Public Schools Act, and achieving it would require that the students who need the most support to become grade-level proficient readers by third-grade receive increased access to high-quality teachers, more time spent exposed to practices aligned with Science of Reading, and more exposure to individualized reading interventions. As illustrated in our report, this is not the current state of N.C.’s educational system. The students at highest risk for becoming struggling readers are among those least likely to be enrolled in schools that have the highest percentage of high-quality teachers. 

Shifts are needed at state, district, and school levels for more equitable access to educational resources. Policymakers need to ask how teachers are hired, placed, and strengthened through coaching and other supportive professional development in ways that determine which students have access to the most skilled educators. These policies must be both immediate, getting educational opportunities to current cohorts of students, and long-term, developing the pipeline of educators and administrators that can create sustainable shifts in longstanding economic, racial, and ethnic disparities.