Third grade students in the Senatobia Municipal School District performed above the statewide average on last year's mandatory reading assessment.
According to the Literacy Based Promotion Act Annual Report of Performance and Student Retention, released in October by the Mississippi Department of Education, 85% of the state's third graders passed their reading assessments for the 2022-23 school year.
Locally, 87.4% of Senatobia School District third graders passed their assessments. Among third graders in the Tate County School District, that number was 76.8%.
The Literacy Based Promotion Act (LBPA) — passed in 2013 and amended in 2016 — promotes reading skills for students in kindergarten through third grade. It requires all third grade Mississippi public school students to score “Level 3” or higher on the reading portion of the Mississippi Academic Assessment Program — English Language Arts (MAAP-ELA) test in order to move on to fourth grade, though students who don’t pass can also receive “good cause exemptions," which allows students learning English or who have disabilities to move on to fourth grade even without passing the reading assessment.
The LBPA also enables MDE to send literacy coaches to schools in which students are struggling to achieve their grade’s reading levels.
Schools in Senatobia and Tate County administered the MAAP-ELA test to their students in April, with the first retest opportunity in May and the second in June.
The 2018-19 school year was the last year reading assessment data was collected before the COVID-19 pandemic. Data wasn’t collected again until the 2021-22 school year.
