Monitoring Student Progress in Reading

There is no nationally required examination that has consequences for individual students’ progression through the educational system in the United States. However, some states require students to pass exit examinations, which assess whether they acquired the expected knowledge and skills in specific subjects, to earn a standard high school diploma. In 2013, 24 states required students to pass an exit examination in at least one subject.73 To monitor studentsʼ academic progress at all grade levels, states use a variety of standardized and classroom-based assessments.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act requires states to administer standardized assessments in mathematics, English/language arts, and science to measure studentsʼ progress for the purpose of evaluating school performance. To ensure that they accurately measure studentsʼ learning, states align assessments with the academic standards for each subject and grade level. Two assessment consortia develop assessments aligned with the Common Core State Standards. As of the start of the 2016–2017 school year, 15 states administered the assessments from the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, nine deployed tests from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career, and the remaining states used peer reviewed assessments aligned to their own standards. The US Department of Education collects school level proficiency rates in reading and mathematics as part of its EDFacts initiative, through which state level results are publicly reported online.

The federal government sponsors the collection of data on student progress in reading at the state level. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative and ongoing assessment of US studentsʼ performance in various subject areas. The survey offers benchmarking data at the national and state levels, as well as for some urban districts, but does not provide results for individual students or schools. NAEP has been collecting nationally representative data since 1969, state representative data since the early 1990s, and data in select urban districts since 2002. Assessments have been conducted periodically in reading, mathematics, science, writing, US history, civics, geography, and the arts. The NAEP reading assessment is administered to representative samples of students at the national level in Grades 4, 8, and 12, and at the state level in Grades 4 and 8 grade every two years. The assessment is designed to examine the outcomes of reading instruction rather than its components and to reflect the increasingly rigorous literacy demands of employment, citizenship, and personal development.74

To follow the progress of individual students, teachers also use classroom-based assessments as tools to monitor studentsʼ reading ability throughout the school year. Classroom‑based assessments of reading often are part of a package of materials purchased with textbooks. However, teachers usually decide whether to use the provided tools or develop their own assessments. Teachers use results from classroom-based assessments to refine classroom instruction and measure studentsʼ progress toward achieving state reading standards.

A variety of grading systems are used in US schools, and there is no nationally mandated grading scale. Districts and teachers usually are responsible for decisions regarding the grading system and scale. Parents and guardians of students are informed about the child’s performance through report cards, which usually are issued four times a year, and parent-teacher conferences, which typically are held twice a year. The responsibility of monitoring individual students’ long term progress generally is shared by students, parents, teachers, and schools, except in cases in which students are identified as having special needs. In these cases, the school district and school are responsible for monitoring student progress toward educational goals.