'Disappointing' reading scores need immediate action, N.B. child and youth advocate says

Child and youth advocate Kelly Lamrock says the province needs to take action immediately to improve student literacy. 

According to results from the latest provincial assessments, 43.4 per cent of Grade 4 students scored "below appropriate achievement" on their English reading assessments in 2022-2023.

"Seeing this really was disappointing," Lamrock told CBC News. 

"We know that transition in Grade 3, whether a child has gone from learning to read to reading to learn, is one of the biggest predictors of future success. And I just don't know if we're dealing with this with the urgency that the situation required."

The province released the results of the assessments in October. While there was a slight dip in the success for Grade 6 and Grade 9 students as well, Grade 4 student success was by far the most dramatic drop. Just two years earlier, only 31.4 per cent of Grade 4 students were below the appropriate level. 

"The results do show negative impacts on English reading assessments at all three grade levels," Education Minister Bill Hogan said in a message on the report. 

"We know how important literacy is, and considerable work has been done to ensure we can help our students develop those skills."

Hogan said the department has made changes to how it delivers its provincial assessments. Thy are now issued online. 

The province also made changes earlier this year to the reading curriculum. The new approach, which was put into place in September, moves away from what's known in teaching circles as balanced literacy, to a new method known as the science of reading. This is for students in kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2 anglophone classrooms.

Focusing on the issue

Lamrock said New Brunswick has pulled itself up from poor assessment results before. In 2000, only 60 per cent of New Brunswick students reached the appropriate achievement levels, but this rose to about 84 per cent by 2010.

"It's now back to where it started 20 years ago, which is unfortunate," said Lamrock. 

I'm really, really worried about about these numbers.- Rebecca Halliday, teacher

He said the province needs to look at what happened between 2000 and 2010 and try to repeat that. Lamrock was education minister for part of that time, from 2006 to 2009. 

He said many teachers have to deal with challenges related to classroom composition, and the province needs to take that off their plate. 

According to the New Brunswick Teachers' Association, teachers have to work in overcrowded classrooms and face verbal and physical abuse.  

"Classroom composition is one of the most urgent things that teachers are raising," said Lamrock. 

"We are seeing classrooms now where over half the children have some kind of identified special needs, some quite intense and quite complex. Getting the support they need in those classroom so that they give individual attention to every student who struggles is absolutely essential."

Lamrock says it's important politicians put other issues aside and give this the attention it deserves. 

"It's just a matter of putting all of the focus that maybe we spend on divisive issues and taking a look at what what the system supposed to be about, which is turning lights on and kids' heads so they learn to read," said Lamrock. 

The price of failure

Rebecca Halliday said it's important to look past the statistics of the assessment results and instead see the individual students who are struggling to read or aren't reading at all. 

"I'm really, really worried about about these numbers," said Halliday, a teacher at Riverbend Community School in Riverview, told Information Morning Fredericton. "Reading is a right for all students, and we're getting it wrong."

Halliday said children are taught to read through memorization and by Grade 4, teachers start to see who is succeeding and who isn't. But Halliday believes this isn't the best approach.

"Memorizing words is not really reading. So by the Grade 4 or 5 point, specifically then even in middle school, the breakdown of true reading comprehension is where it becomes painfully obvious," said Halliday. "And I think that's what's happening in these assessments."

The inability to read at the right level can have a huge impact on students, who begin to fall behind, she said. They can become frustrated, disengaged, and their self-esteem takes a hit. 

"You get kids who just stop trying.… You get kids who could have had one possible future struggling on another track. And these are kids from all types of different backgrounds."