In the charts below look at the disparity between black and white third grade pass rates for the School District of Indian River County’s Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) English Language Arts (ELA) testing.

In 2015, 66.2% of white students passed compared to 30.7% of black students.

In 2019, 70.2% of white students passed compared to 38.7% of black students. That’s a 1.26 % increase in four years.

All Florida schools teach the Florida Standards in ELA. Student performance on the FSA assessments provides important information to parents/guardians, teachers, policy makers, and the general public regarding how well students are learning the Florida Standards.

FSA ELA assessments measure student performance of the Florida Standards in English language arts. For all grade levels tested, the FSA ELA tests assess what students know and are able to do in the broad reporting categories listed below. The difficulty of the concepts assessed on the FSA ELA tests progresses systematically from grade to grade, as does the complexity of the text presented to the student at each grade level.

Grade 3

Key Ideas and Details

In this category, students are expected to read closely to comprehend, analyze, and summarize essential information and concepts, referencing evidence from the text to support inferences and conclusions.

Craft and Structure
In this category, students are expected to interpret literal and nonliteral meanings of words/phrases, determine how text structures and text features impact meaning, and distinguish personal point of view from that of the narrator or author.

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
In this category, students are expected to integrate and analyze content presented in diverse media formats and analyze treatment of similar themes or topics.

Language and Editing
In this category, students are expected to demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar, usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.

According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, “Millions of American children get to fourth grade without learning to read proficiently, and that puts them on the high school dropout track. The ability to read by third grade is critical to a child’s success in school, life-long earning potential and their ability to contribute to the nation’s economy and its security.

Obviously, studying the data below, 61.3% of third grade black students are not reading at a level of 90% proficiently by the end of third grade.

 “The 90% rule of comprehension is when students know 90% of the vocabulary words in a reading passage and they are able to infer successfully and generate meaning (Stahl, 1999).  In addition, knowing 90% of the words helps the reader to use context clues, cognitive strategies and inferring abilities that strengthen reader comprehension and also support learning additional words (Nation, 1990).

If a student’s academic language fails to keep within at least 90% of the academic rigors of classroom texts, then eventually students will feel overwhelmed, and loss of motivation is almost surely to occur.  Teachers needs to monitor student’s language comprehension to make sure all students know at least 90% of the words before they are asked to engage in reading and comprehending the text (Rog. 2003).”

Once again, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, “Children can succeed at advancing to a 3rd grade reading level only if policymakers focus on school readiness, school attendance, summer learning, family support and high-quality teaching.”

	2015 White	2015 Black	2019 White	2019 Black
FLORIDA	65.2%	34.4%	70.6%	40.0%
SDIRC	66.2%	30.7%	70.2%	38.7%
BEACHLAND	92.3%	22.2%	80.4%	45.5%
CITRUS	56.2%	27.3%	54.5%	39.3%
DODGERTOWN	50.0%	35.5%	17.6%	16.3%
FELLSMERE	35.3%		40.0%
GLENDALE	59.5%	17.4%	68.9%	42.9%
IMAGINE CHARTER	60.3%		75.3%
INDIAN RIVER ACADEMY	56.0%	23.7%	67.9%	43.5%
LIBERTY MAGNET	75.9%	40.0%	91.2%	46.2%
NORTH COUNTY CHARTER	83.9%		84.2%
OSCEOLA MAGNET	78.1%		83.9%	53.8%
PELICAN ISLAND	82.6%	50.0%	79.4%	66.7%
SEBASTIAN	57.4%	0.0%	47.6%	21.1%
ST PETER’S		25.0%
TREASURE COAST	67.1%		71.0%
VERO BEACH	50.0%	36.7%	50.0%	34.4%
Source: edstats.fldoe.org
Compiled by: Claudia Wahl

So, to the the School District of Indian River School Board and District Administrators, what’s the plan to address this black and white student disparity?