For the last five years, Alabama has embarked on an effort to dramatically reshape how it teaches reading to young students.

And recently, it appeared to have paid off. Social media posts and news releases across the state this spring praised test results.

“91% of third graders are on grade level,” state Superintendent Eric Mackey told APT’s Capitol Journal on May 17. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin posted a graph on social media. Multiple school districts congratulated students.

The problem? They read the information incorrectly [Editor’s note: AL.com reporter Trisha Powell Crain tweeted in error as well.].

Actually, the percentage of third graders reading “on grade level” isn’t 91%. It’s 77%, according to test results the state department of education provided to AL.com.

Real progress has been made on reading, but confusion over Alabama’s literacy numbers and terms is rampant.

That confusion has caused some experts and educators to raise questions about whether Alabama is being honest about its improvements. Even social media jumped on the question. More importantly, confusion may also impact which students, in K-3 and beyond, get access to support.

“We have made it not only complicated, but deceptive in the fact that we’ve used all of this terminology; it is a widespread [belief that] our kids are ‘on grade level,’” said Shelley Vail-Smith, a literacy expert helping to oversee the state’s efforts.

“The biggest danger in all of this is for parents to think, okay, they made this, they’re fine.”

Where to set the bar

Martin Nalls, head of school of i3 Academy, a public charter school in Birmingham, said the Alabama Literacy Act, passed in 2019, has paved the way to improve students’ reading skills.

“The great part about it,” he said, “is that as educators, we don’t necessarily have a lot of levers to pull to create a sense of urgency. So when the legislature passes a law that says students will be retained if they do not score a certain score on a test, that creates a sense of urgency, not only for school administrators and educators, but also families.”

Among many other adjustments to literacy instruction, Alabama gave students a new test to measure reading in 2023. And officials had to decide what cut score — essentially, what standard students needed to meet — on the test.

Experts said third graders would need to score at least a 473 to show they are reading “on grade level.”

But as educators considered the results of the 2023 test, they became nervous about the possibility of retaining as many as 17,000 students if the cut score was set at 473. The state Board of Education instead chose to use a cut score of 435, two standard errors below 473, a statistically sound, but lower, bar.

Mackey told state board members in August that the updated score would help “make sure that we are not retaining children that are in that gray area and should not be retained. So we’re trying to give the greatest benefit to the students.”

The 435 score became the measure for “sufficiency,” which is what the law requires, but does not spell out clearly.

“Sufficiency represents minimum grade level reading performance necessary to matriculate to fourth grade,” a spokesperson for the state department of education told AL.com.

The percentage of children scoring below sufficiency dropped substantially – from 17% in 2023 to 9% in 2024 and the percentage of children reaching grade level – scoring 473 or above – rose dramatically – from 68% in 2023 to 77% in 2024.

But there are still thousands of children in the gray area between sufficiency and grade-level who still need help. Click here if you’re unable to see the chart.

Here are the same results, but this time showing the number of third graders scoring at each level. Click here if you are unable to see the table.

The terms don’t just measure success: They also impact which students get access to support.

According to 2024 test results, nearly 5,000 third graders are at risk of being held back because they are not reading “sufficiently.”

But that’s just a fraction of the students who are not reading well, according to state department data reviewed by AL.com.

An additional 7,400 students aren’t reading “on grade level,” but will advance to fourth grade because they scored above 435 and are reading “sufficiently.”

They may have a false sense of success about their reading skills, experts say. And without interventions to support those students, they may enter higher grades without the skills to understand what they’re reading. That can have long-term impacts on a student’s ability to do well on all subjects.

Vail-Smith, president of the Alabama Campaign on Grade Level Reading, a committee overseeing the implementation of the Literacy Act, said using multiple similar terms such as “sufficient,” “on grade level,” and “proficient” confuses parents (and many other people).

Consistent messaging was key to Mississippi’s recent effort to boost literacy, according to Kymyona Burk. She oversaw the implementation of that state’s third grade reading law, passed in 2013, and now serves on Alabama’s Literacy Task Force and directs early literacy efforts for Excel In Ed.

In Mississippi, Burk said reports to parents about test results stated that there was a difference between reaching the cut score – which meant their child would move on to fourth grade – and proficiency.

“We did not want to mislead parents,” Burk said of Mississippi’s notifications. “We did not want to mislead fourth grade teachers.”

Alabama schools are required to notify parents of students scoring below 435; the law doesn’t require notification for students scoring above 435.

Raising the bar

Like Alabama, Mississippi also started with a relatively low bar for success. Then the state slowly increased the rigor expected of students and teachers.

Alabama plans to raise expectations, too, but hasn’t set a specific timeline.

Some officials think it’s time.

“Raise that bar just a little bit at a time, but raise it every year,” Rep. Terri Collins, R-Decatur, an original sponsor of the Literacy Act, said. “That’s how we get where we want to go if we want to move up.”

The law gives the board the authority to set new cut scores at any time, but Mackey recommended changing the score no more than every other year. He told board members in August the earliest they should consider changing the score would be summer 2025.

When the board voted in September to set the cut score at 435, Jackie Zeigler, R-Mobile, was one of three board members who voted no, expressing concern about sending kids to fourth grade unprepared and with little support.

Zeigler told AL.com she plans to bring up the topic at the June 13 work session, where school-level reading test results will be made public.

“I came away [from board discussions] with the understanding that there was a need for a time frame to pass between the adoption of the new state standards and the implementation of the ACAP,” Zeigler said, referring to the new state test. “That time has now passed.”

Mark Dixon, president of the A+ Education Partnership, a nonprofit helping to implement the Literacy Act, said he is looking to the board to raise the score.

“The expectation has always been to raise the cut score over time like other states have done,” Dixon said, “and we fully support the State Board taking that action.”

Consequences for students

This is the first year that the cut score and messaging around it really matters, because of the consequences: 2024 is the first year children could actually be held back under the law if they aren’t reading sufficiently.

During the onramp to fully implementing the Literacy Act, the state has improved how it teaches children to read, experts say. Early grade educators statewide got new training in the science of reading, new reading standards were put in place and new textbooks were vetted. And test scores show signs of improvement statewide in many schools and districts.

Acknowledging improvement in Alabama’s overall reading results, Burk said students who are struggling to read on grade level will need support in the fourth grade. And it’s important for fourth grade teachers to know which students are in that gray area.

“The question becomes how will those students [in between sufficient and on grade level] be flagged to receive the additional supports that we know they need,” she said.

“There’s going to have to be an intentional effort to support those students who are checking the box as meeting the cut score, but not being on grade level reading.”

Vail-Smith said she worries that the true cost is that schools may not offer – or parents may not ask for – additional support. Parents of children who are reading sufficiently but not on grade level might think, she said, “we don’t have to go to summer camps. We don’t have to do any of the other things.”

State education officials have made it clear that they expect schools to offer additional reading support if needed.

But the full funding needed to help older students hasn’t materialized. Funds that are part of the Alabama Reading Initiative – which supports the Literacy Act’s implementation – cannot be used on students beyond third grade, Mackey said.

The board requested $22 million to support struggling readers in the fourth grade and beyond. The legislature funded the request with $5 million from a $681 million supplemental appropriation. The board will be back at the table, requesting more funding for those efforts in next year’s budget, according to a department spokesperson.