When it comes to reading, writing and knowing your vocabulary, it's an "A" or nothing in teacher Nancy Jaramillo's third-grade class at Ramirez Thomas Elementary School on the south side of town.

"I want them to strive and know that they did their best and not just say, 'I did well,' " Jaramillo said. "I want them to know what they need to shoot for -- a perfect score. That's their goal."

She doesn't want to see even one of her kids held back -- an option lawmakers are considering during this year's legislative session.

Two bills ending social promotion and promoted by Gov. Susana Martinez passed the House last year but died in the Senate. The governor is making another push in the current session, and several bills have been introduced offering different schemes for holding kids back in the third grade if they don't meet benchmarks for reading and math.

It's a Friday morning, and Jaramillo's students are taking a spelling test. Most of them get an "A."

One boy misses one word -- couch. "I get confused with 'ou' and 'ow,' " he says.

Then the kids collectively read the Kwanzaa folk tale "Seven Spools of Thread" from Treasures, the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill reading program textbook. Afterward, Jaramillo separates her class into several groups, based on their reading skills. Eight students are reading at the third-grade level, eight at second-grade level and eight at first-grade level.

These smaller groups build confidence and allow everyone to take a turn reading. Jaramillo can more easily hone in on problems, too: Is one child unable to pronounce words? Is another reading well but not comprehending what the words mean? Is a third having difficulty with phrases in quotations or punctuation marks?

The kids in one group -- all at the second-grade level -- are tackling Androcles and the Lion. Jaramillo corrects the smallest mistakes in their reading -- when they say "the lion" instead of "that lion," for instance.

Her approach is direct, no-nonsense, supportive. She's not mean, but she demands a lot from them. Their proficiency level is posted on their student folders hanging on the wall of the classroom.

"The teacher has responsibility, the parent has responsibility, and the student has responsibility for learning," she says. "If the students don't know where they are at, how would they know where they need to go? It [their grade file] is not an embarrassment. It's a fact. It may motivate them to move at a quicker rate."

She says she sees both the pros and cons of holding children back if they can't read to proficiency by the end of the third grade. But, she stresses, reform should focus on intervention and remediation. "Students have to be identified in the first grade and have intervention programs in place in the first, second and third grade. And there has to be more than one assessment that measures their growth, more than one SBA," she says -- referring to the New Mexico Standards Based Assessment, the state test used to determine Adequate Yearly Progress under federal law.

Should they stay or should they go?

Ramirez Thomas has 73 third-graders, 45 of whom are English-language learners. Nearly all of the school's students are eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch -- a poverty indicator. Based on the school's most recent report card, 45 percent of the school's third-grade students are proficient in reading.

If House Bill 69 passes the Legislature, probably two-thirds of that school's third-graders would stay behind, according to Adale Flores and Linda Archibald, who work as instructional literacy coaches at Ramirez Thomas. The bill gives the state the right to hold back a third-grader who can't read at grade level by the end of the school year.

Rival measure House Bill 53 gives parents the final say about whether their third-graders, who are struggling with both reading and math, should advance or not.

Both bills include early intervention measures.

Gov. Martinez emphasizes ending social promotion as part of her educational-reform package. In promoting HB 69, the governor and her secretary of education-designate, Hanna Skandera, referred to studies showing that about 80 percent of fourth-graders in the state cannot read at grade level.

An examination of AYP data shows that in most cases, reading-proficiency rates for Santa Fe Public Schools drop by anywhere from a few percentage points to nearly 30 percentage points from third to fourth grade.

Last spring, the state Public Education Department began grading Standards Based Assessment scores on a new scale. Under that new system, few Santa Fe elementary schools can boast that at least 75 percent of their third-graders are reading proficiently: Acequia Madre and Wood Gormley elementary schools, and Gonzales and Amy Biehl community schools.

National studies continue to show contradictory results on the value of social promotion, often noting that students who are promoted despite poor reading skills are inadequately prepared for college, while acknowledging that students who repeat a grade more than double their odds of dropping out before graduation.

Reading curves

Downtown on Monday morning, teacher Evelyn Quintana is working with her group of third-graders at Carlos Gilbert Elementary School. The drill is not that different from Jaramillo's class: a review of vocabulary words on the board, a group reading of "Seven Spools of Thread," and then a division into guided-reading groups.

At one point, Quintana stands over a young girl who is clearly having trouble with every single word, but they work together to articulate the words one by one, out loud, in front of the otherwise silent class.

The girl, Quintana explains later, is dyslexic. At the beginning of the school year, she wouldn't even read aloud.

Another girl, her eyes squinting the whole while, manages to stumble through her section of The Knight of Dawn during the guided-reading section and earns praise from Quintana for doing "so much better." But, Quintana says, "Tomorrow, bring your glasses."

High-achieving students sitting together are allowed to read what they wish during this time period. One group of proficient third-graders is reading a magazine article on the Chinese New Year -- though one little boy's voice fills with concern because he fears the text is in Chinese. "I read well, but I can't read Chinese," he says.

Quintana said she puts her own reading assessment plan in place on top of what the district and state mandate. Her students are expected to read for 30 minutes every night, and parents must sign off on a form confirming the kids did the work. At lunchtime, she invites kids into her classroom, where they can read the story in their own voice, and then in the voice of a stuffed animal, adding fun and a touch of theater to the task. She also gives after-school tutoring to kids.

She figures eight of her 19 kids are up to grade level now. She's confident she can get the rest there by the end of the year. As to the state legislating an end to social promotion, Quintana doesn't like it: "I truly believe it's between the parent and the teacher. Say I get a student reading at a first-grade level or below that, and they gained two years of reading in one year. Do I punish him and hold him back, even if he is getting better at reading? Do we consider just the one test -- the SBA test -- to measure growth? Is English the second language? Do they have learning disabilities? Are they dyslexic?"

Quintana is not the only reading teacher or literacy coach to point to the extenuating circumstances, be it learning disabilities, dyslexia, poverty (the argument being that a hungry child cannot learn), or dealing with the challenge of a second language. The current bills provide exceptions for situations like this -- which could, therefore, exclude a lot of children within Santa Fe Public Schools.

In the 2010-11 school year, 68 percent of third-graders at Carlos Gilbert were considered proficient in reading, based on the new rating of SBA scores. The school has about 50 third-graders, two of whom are English-language learners. About 35 percent of the kids are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.

Low proficiency in reading often correlates with poverty in Santa Fe Public Schools -- but not always. At Amy Biehl, for instance, 69 percent of the population is eligible for free and reduced lunch; some 80 percent of third-graders are reading proficiently.

At El Dorado Community School, only 20 percent of the students receive free or reduced-price lunches and, in 2010-11, about 65 percent of third-graders read proficiently. At Sweeney Elementary School, where nearly all students fall into the free/reduced lunch category, 54 percent of third-graders are proficient in reading.

Reading to learn, not learning to read

Just two of the 10 reading educators interviewed for this story said they are open to the idea of retaining students if they cannot read. But those two feel the parent and the school district should make that decision, rather than the state. Everyone agrees that early intervention practices should be funded and put into place, which all the current bills support -- though districts will likely be responsible for the funding.

Bobbie Gutierrez, superintendent of Santa Fe Public Schools, estimates that 15 percent of the district's third-graders would likely be held back under HB 69's guidelines. (Nationwide, retention rates are between 13 percent and 15 percent.)

Preliminary estimates suggest that the cost to the Santa Fe district -- in terms of extra teachers, educational assistants, tutors and materials -- would be about $494,000.

At Ramirez Thomas, Flores and Archibald express slightly different views about the state holding kids back, but both say the governor is right to spotlight the issue. They agree that she is not far off when she notes that 80 percent of fourth-graders can't read as well they should.

"We need to be able to do better," Archibald said. "If anything, perhaps the governor and the secretary's plan can help us wake up and smell the coffee. We need more ongoing training and professional development for teachers to address this."

Teachers need to embrace data -- including test scores -- to measure students' proficiency and help them make progress, both Flores and Archibald said. But both believe the assessment should be based not on one test but on multiple measures such as DIBELS (Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills), GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design), in-class teacher assessments and SBA tests.

The district has 10 literacy coaches (including Flores and Archibald) in place at nine elementary schools -- most on the south side of town. Literacy coordinator Susan O'Brien said she and these coaches work with principals and teachers to build professional development programs, including classroom observations of reading methods.

She also runs two literacy committees made up of educators, administrators and reading coaches who are looking at third-grade retention, examining the Treasures program and using writing assessments to reinforce reading skills.

"I don't think it is a wise decision to hold children back in the third grade as the first line of response," O'Brien said. "It affects motivation and self-esteem."

But she, too, acknowledges that a fourth-grader who cannot use reading to learn will have difficulty catching up.

"The gap will continue to get larger and larger. The older you get, the more complex the reading gets, and eventually the student falls behind, and checks out and then drops out."

For O'Brien, the question isn't about retention. "Instead of, 'You're not moving forward, so we'll give you more of the same,' we need to discuss what is at the core of this problem. Why are our children not reading to grade level?"

It's a question the district -- as well as the entire state -- is attempting to tackle.

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.

SOCIAL PROMOTION IN THE LEGISLATURE

HOUSE BILL 53, introduced by Rep. Rick Miera, D-Albuquerque, calls for retention -- if parents approve -- of students not proficient in reading and math from kindergarten to the eighth grade. It calls for assessment, intervention and remediation programs. Parents must pay the cost of summer school, intervention and remediation programs offered in grades nine through 12, unless they are indigent.

HOUSE BILL 69, introduced by Mary Helen Garcia, D-Las Cruces, retains third-graders who cannot read to grade level but does not do so for students in grades four through eight. Like Miera's bill, these bills call for providing assessment, intervention and remediation programs. School districts would bear the cost of intervention and remediation programs.

SENATE BILL 96, introduced by Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, differs little from the House bills but, as with Garcia's bill, notes that students not proficient at the end of third grade "shall be retained and provided with intensive remediation," suggesting parents will have no say in the matter. It also stresses assessment, intervention and remediation efforts.

All bills would take effect in the 2013-14 school year and make exceptions to retention for students who are English-language learners, demonstrate learning disabilities or have already been held back in kindergarten through the second grade.

In addition, Rep. Ray Begaye, D-Shiprock, introduced House Joint Memorial 2, requesting the formation of a study group that will research and report on third-grade retention policies.

Visit www.nmlegis.gov, click on "legislation" in the left-hand box, and then click on "bill finder" to read the three bills.