ARLINGTON, Va. — Reading scores across the country have plummeted since the pandemic started. According to a federal study, reading test scores have reached their lowest levels in decades.
Northern Virginia is not immune to the problems, and districts across the area have reported varying levels of learning loss.
Arlington Public Schools' most recent reading assessment presented a mixed bag of results. It has left some parents feeling like their kids got left behind.
Kristin Gillig is one of those parents. She already has her hands full as she shuttles two Arlington County middle schoolers between ice hockey and horseback riding.
“Since the pandemic hit, I had to quit my job to help them navigate the world of virtual school, life and middle school,” she explained.
Gillig’s children both have dyslexia. She said the pandemic only made learning more difficult — especially reading.
“I’m worried they won’t be as prepared for the real world as I would like them to be,” she said. “That they won’t have reading and writing skills I would like them to have.”
She is not alone. This summer, Arlington released it’s Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills or DIBELS scores. It found that more 4th and 5th graders needed intensive reading support at the end of last year than the beginning.
WUSA9 spoke with one of Arlington County’s supervisor for language arts. She pointed out that while 4th and 5th grade students required more support, those same assessment scores show reading proficiency improvements in every grade at the same time.
Part of that improvement came from Arlington, like many school districts, making the change to learning practices based on the Science of Reading. That means a focus on lesson plans that are grounded in research, like learning with sounds first.
“Unfortunately for my kids, when they were little, they didn’t get the structured literacy,” Gillig said.
She said she is happy to see Arlington change course when it comes to how it teaches reading.
“But in my experience, my kids have missed the wave a little bit and I can see the results,” she said.
We asked Arlington schools: What do they do about the students who have fallen behind?
The spokesperson said they have more reading intervention resources, new assessments, and training more teachers this year on how to teach with these new practices.