TEXAS \u2014\u00a0Extra money is heading into the pockets of some parents of third graders next school year, but only if their child did not pass the reading STAAR test.<\/p>\n
Statewide, that\u2019s about 100,000 third graders. The money will only be able to be used to hire a reading tutor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Joe family is not new to extra help with reading. Soon-to-be fourth grader Aleyna Joe sees a reading tutor regularly in East Dallas.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur journey has been a little bit different because she was in a bilingual education. We noticed she was learning Spanish and reading faster and better in Spanish than she was in English,\u201d said Tiffany Joe, Aleyna\u2019s mom. \u201cHaving a professional that’s really specialized in reading also listen to your child takes a little bit of weight off of you to be sitting there deciding, ‘Are they having trouble? Are they not having trouble?’\u201d<\/p>\n
The families of students who did not pass the STAAR reading exam will soon be able to apply for extra money for private tutoring through a new portal launched by the Texas Education Agency called Parent Access to Supplemental Supports (PASS).<\/p>\n
For Christine Duffy, signing up her tutoring business, Literacy Love, to accept the state funding was a no-brainer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be able to support the community \u2014 everybody. There’s various schools in East Dallas that don\u2019t have the same support that some other schools have, so I feel like it\u2019s important to be available for all,\u201d said Duffy.<\/p>\n
The state will give $400 for tutoring to students who did not meet grade level requirements in the third grade STAAR exam, a pivotal year for reading.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn third grade, you\u2019re no longer learning how to read. You\u2019re mostly reading to learn,\u201d said Duffy.<\/p>\n
According to state data, one in four third graders did not meet grade level on this year\u2019s reading exam.<\/p>\n
Spectrum News looked at state data to see how some of Texas’ largest school districts fared in reading.<\/p>\n
San Antonio ISD had more than 40% of its third graders fail to meet reading requirements on the STAAR. In Fort Worth, 35% did not meet it. Nearly 30% in Dallas and Houston, and 23% in Austin did not pass the state reading requirements last year.<\/p>\n
Those kids not meeting grade level are why Duffy says she tutors.<\/p>\n
“I just fell in love with the idea of teaching people how to read because if you can\u2019t read, there\u2019s really not much for you to do in this world,\u201d said Duffy.\u00a0 \u201cEverything requires reading.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several books and a lot of work later, Aleyna\u2019s reading has certainly improved.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we came here, she felt more confident, and I noticed she started picking up more books on her own,\u201d said Tiffany\u00a0Joe. \u201cShe asked for a Kindle for Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe more importantly, Aleyna said she\u2019s enjoying reading now, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it helped me read and made me wanna read more,\u201d said Aleyna Joe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014\u00a0Extra money is heading into the pockets of some parents of third graders next school year, but…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":979213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,16549,1596,407,251735,50,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5284],"class_list":["post-979212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-america","tag-app-education","tag-dallas","tag-education","tag-lauren-rangel","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-tx","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vod"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117035064990507041","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/979213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}