WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y. (WKBW) — The National Report Card shows yet another drop in reading scores across the country.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress has released its 2024 scores this week.
While math held steady, reading scores dropped two points, again, for both 4th and 8th graders.
New York State students are averaging right along with the rest of the nation.
The problem is those scores are hinting at significant learning loss.
One in three 8th-grade students are falling below the basic level of reading, 4th graders are more than 40% below basic.
Western New York organizations came together Thursday night to try to answer the question of how to boost grades.
"It's all about transparency. People don't have information, and if you don't have information, you can't act. You can't move forward and this is vital information when it comes to literacy. If you don't have it, you can't improve. So, that was one thing and transparency is everything. We need truth and we need it now. We don't need to find out about it later. We don't need to find out about it by looking in the rearview mirror," Niagara Community Information Group Founder CEO Dr. Tina Shultz said.
Niagara Falls Parent Lawrence Blaber said, "It doesn't seem to be a concern. There doesn't seem to be any urgency to fix that and it's a problem for me on a level because our daughter is dyslexic, so to get her the science and tutoring she needs, the school district doesn't teach that curriculum so we have from Niagara Falls to Williamsville twice a week to get that done. We've already blown a transmission driving that much. It's double hard because we have a younger child who is autistic, who needs speech therapy but we can't commit to both speech therapy and tutoring."
"We need to collectively be doing everything we can to accelerate the process by which our children will learn how to read. Tonight, we learned it's not just Buffalo. We heard from Niagara Falls and parents from Rochester. So, we know in Western New York in general, we have a serious issue. If parents are not the leading voice, on the reason why we need to do something right now, nothing is going to ever change. So, what we do is make it clear that we as parents see what's going on. We understand what is going on and we are going to be part of the solution," We The Parents of WNY Member, Samuel L. Radford III said.
