Hello! My son has high verbal skills and is reading well above grade level. His preschool teacher has already given me the "the early readers even out by third grade" speech. He has an IEP for OT and PT and will have a reevaluation meeting before Kindergarten, I am prepared for them to throw the "readers even out" fact at me again in the discussion if not beforehand, but am wondering if there is any research they can call upon to say that? Where did that come from? And what percent of the time is it true? My searches have turned up nothing concrete.

Here's a position statement on early childhood from NAGC:

http://www.nagc.org/sites/default/f...y%20Childhood%20Position%20Statement.pdf

A paper cited in the above statement, on reading achievement in precocious readers from age 5 to 11:

http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/31745/

And a case study by the same authors:

http://centaur.reading.ac.uk/31744/

Cut sheet on educating early readers from UConn:

http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/reports/Trifolds/A9403P.pdf

ERIC summary on research regarding precocious readers:

http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ750775.pdf

I don't know what research teachers think they are quoting. But I think "some" kids will appear to even out and these are the ones they are talking about. Kids who are average or bright but didn't have preschool and the parents never talked about letters, read to them, or do or anything academic at home. These kids show up at kindergarten or first grade completely clueless but they are cognitively ready to learn the concepts, so they make big gains fast. They might jump from the low reading group to the middle reading group within weeks or months. Then there are the kids who will probably always be in the low reading group unless they get special help. They either have a disability, or they are simply "slow". I tutored reading and worked with about 18 kids in first to third grade. With most of them there was NO WAY I would have been able to teach them at age 4 or 5 to read. I would have rather banged my head against a wall. Most of these kids made gains with help, but tended to fall back down when the help was withdrawn. I had the most success with the very young kids who just hadn't been exposed to anything in the past. Those are the kids that had parents who did nothing, and just needed a little more 1 on 1 attention. Then they "evened out".

I think the term "evening out" is misleading, but I do think there is something to be considered from the teacher's point of view. The way it was explained by a teacher to me (in Kindergarten/1st grade) was that it's not always evident in an early elementary classroom (K-2), who the students are that will one day be the highest-ability readers or the lowest-ability readers etc. - simply because children reach the developmentally "ready to read" point at different points in time. It's a reality I saw among the children of friends that sometimes the kids who were reading going into Kindergarten really *weren't* the kids who were at the highest reading level or highest-achieving kids overall once they were in 3rd grade or higher. The reasons they were reading sooner were sometimes simply that they were developmentally ready at an earlier age than others, or other times the kids who weren't reading simply hadn't been exposed to reading "lessons" etc before entering school. None of the students "evened out" as individuals when they reached third grade, but it was easier to see where everyone "fit" in among their peers in 3rd grade because the kids who started reading late had caught up.

When your son has his re-evaluation meeting for his IEP, will he have cognitive and achievement testing? If not, can you request it? That should give you strong data supporting acceleration or differentiation etc if that's what you're seeking - probably more so than simply being able to show that he's already reading. Combine "already reading" with strong scores in reading ability and reading achievement on a test that teachers are familiar with, and that will give you the data you need to counter an argument that he might "even out".

Best wishes,

polarbear

This sounds reasonable and common sense. You're describing the point of view, that I assume most here hold, that differences in ability certainly exist, but measurements of ability at a young age are sometimes unreliable.

However when people say "they all even out by third grade" they are saying something completely different. They are saying that differences in ability do not exist.

The official levels in my son's first grade class certainly looked more even at the end of the year. When the group reached the desired level they were given no further instruction or testing. The extra time was used to give extra instruction to the lower groups and push them faster. Hey Presto! Evening out.

I should clarify that the research citations I listed above generally say that early readers do not "even out" by third grade.

I understand what you are saying 22B, and also understand that may be what some people mean when they refer to "evening out" by third grade, but in my experience I have never heard an educator say that all students even out in ability, but ran into brick walls repeatedly in early elementary with teachers not wanting to differentiate because they felt students would "even out" in terms of where their true relative abilities are once they'd reached that magical third grade point. So I was merely attempting to point out one point of view that is sometimes encountered in advocating for gifted children in early elementary. In the case of either belief, having current ability and achievement testing will useful when advocating.

polarbear

I think to some extent reading has a binary aspect - either a kid can pick up a given piece of everyday text and read it more or less fluently, or she can't. And absent LDs or other special circumstances, most kids fall on the "can" side of the divide by third grade. I've always assumed that must be the origin of the conventional wisdom. As an early reader very invested in my identity as such when I was a kid, I remember my mild chagrin at 7 or 8 when my best friend was reading aloud from the Little House books and I realized she could do it just as well as I could. Of course that doesn't mean that the evening out occurs across all domains, just that most kids have mastered the mechanics of reading such that a fluent reader no longer stands out. The early readers, of course, may have a much larger vocabulary and be learning lots of higher-level skills, but those things aren't instantaneously apparent in the way that a kindergartener reading The Hobbit or Harry Potter is.

This was also our experience. They try to get all the kids to the same level. Children who are ahead of the "desired level" are not given instruction in order to keep learning, but stay at the "desired" level. Eventually the other kids will "catch up" as they are still learning, and the children who are (or were) ahead, are not.

Well put. What is generally meant by "evening out" by 3rd grade is that all students are able to read what is required of them by 3rd grade with exceptions of kids with LDs. So, if the school requires all kids to be able to read the Magic Treehouse series by 3rd grade, it is possible that the late readers have learnt enough of the mechanics of reading by that time and are capable of reading those books.

I think that one key thing that is frequently missed by those who state that all "even out by third," is that those students who HAVE been reading well for all of those years enjoy a qualitatively different experience in those early years, when compared with those who have just started to read.

agreed. I got the distinct impression from some of the teachers that they were actually trying to get the kids to "even out"...or at the very least, completely neglecting instruction for those who are advanced, after all those kids don't "need" anything. I do think when people claim kids "even out" they are implying that their ability levels are all about the same by third grade. From the data I saw on fluency, that's really not the case. Some kids could read 60 words per minute and others could read 160 words per minute. Since they are resistant to doing above-level testing, they probably don't even know how advanced the advanced kids are in terms of comprehension ability. All they know are the results of grade-level tests. I think that most advanced readers will continue to grow, even if they are not given any instruction, since most kids will read at home. They won't do as well as they could, though, if they were actually given instruction. I'm not sure how anyone who actually takes a close look at data could ever claim that kids "even out" or that their ability levels are all about the same. I think it's just a case of gifted kids being completely ignored with reading like everything else, and given material that is way too easy so they look much less advanced than they really are. Kind of like giving a kid who can do long division 30+10 and then saying "see, she's not really advanced, she's doing the same math as everyone else."

I don't mind my nine year old using the 5th grade reading textbook along side his class...he finds the stories in it funny, the poetry just right...he still finds farts hysterical...not going to find much farting in lit at his instructional level (ninth grade). He just gets the work done super fast and has time to read stuff that is more challenging.

I'd love to get a silent reading words per minute rate on him.

Take a sunflower, lily, and dandelion sprout. Put all three in small pots, and give them all a small amount of water and limited amount of sunlight per day. Start adding nutrients and extra sunlight/water to the dandelion when you notice it's not growing as fast as the others.

Then exclaim, "Oh, look, they all evened out!"

What most differentiates children is not their ability to decode words but to *understand* what they read. As Arthur Jensen wrote in "The g Factor",

Thank you all for responding! I will definitely be asking for IQ and achievement testing for his IEP reevaluation. I looked into doing it privately and it runs $1500 which I just can't pull off right now, and I'm hoping I won't have to if they achieve some accurate results with him. I know they use the SAGES 2 to identify kids K-8, I wonder if that is what they will use and what info I can gain from that.
Right now my biggest problem is that everyone around him at school looks at him through a lens of disability instead of ability, if that makes sense. His older brother DS10 went through the same school and has ASD with limited expressive language, so anything DS4 does seems to be framed by that. I don't deny that DS4 has low tone and can't write or draw, but I also see him doing the "I will limit myself verbally and censor my thoughts to fit in at school" thing.
So my hope was that if they saw him reading it might stimulate the thought that maybe this kid isn't playing with kids in preschool and only wants to converse with the aides because he sees them as babies (which he tells me). But the teacher threw the "things even out with reading around third grade" idea the other day so I was wondering what that was based on, so thank you it makes much more sense - those who use that are talking about the behavior of being able to read, not the underlying comprehension and ability to work with text.
So any advice on what to do with a kid who behaves totally differently at home than at school? The CST and teacher explain it as sensory related, thoughts?

I don't know literature in this area, but I would assume that, yes, reading does even out at some point. What I mean is that at some point most people will read at 3rd grade level, or 8th grade level. It's just like all people sooner or later will learn multiplications. But I think the point of differentiation is that, while others learn to reach a 3rd grade reading level or math level, the kids who are already there should be learning something that they don't already know how to do. I just think the argument that "they will level out in a particular area" is irrelevant.

I'm very curious at your thinking here, as it may help unravel the myth. I would use "even out" or "level out" to mean at the same age kids all have the same ability. You seem to be using the concept differently.

I've also seen distinctions here where some people reference "reading" as just processing the words on the page and knowing the meaning of the sentences. Whereas as a category, I think there are different degrees of understanding and depth. With the same word knowledge and reading speed, one kid may read The Lord of the Flies and see it as an adventure story; another might read it and see it as a reflection on society and the behavior of mobs and norms, etc.

Similarly, two kids may read the same vocabulary list and both get 100% on the test. One will mostly recognize the words when the encounter them again, the other will see them as valuable resources and fluently include them in conversation and writing going forward.

"Evening out" is an extreme oversimplification of the value of early reading. Early fluent readers (who enjoy excellent comprehension) can enjoy literature at a (much) younger age, as well as teach themselves any nonfiction topic that is of interest to them (and I've personally seen my kiddos run with this one; there is an unbelievable value to this skill). It is NOT simply a matter of reading - it is a matter of access to knowledge and wonderful stories. Meanwhile, reading strengthens vocabulary skills, as well as skills that will later be used in writing, spelling, etc.

Yes, other children eventually learn to read, but the early readers have undeniably been granted early access to an amazing world of stories, information, and unfettered LEARNING.

Sorry, I wasn't trying at all to use the term as accurately as I can. I was simply trying to say that the usual arguments that teachers give to advanced students (the playing field will level by 3rd grade) is because of the lack of differentiation, and should not be the reason for a lack of differentiation. Please ignore my previous comment (and this one as well).

There is a sense in which aspects of reading level out for the majority of the population. That is, decoding and fluency skills essentially plateau at the late middle school/early high school level because they are easy enough cognitive tasks for the majority of the population to grasp (including some cognitively quite low-functioning individuals). (And one of the reasons derived grade equivalents are a problem on NRT.) Vocabulary and comprehension can continue to build beyond that level, of course.

I completely, totally agree with this. Reading strengthens a lot of academic skills needed in later elementary years/middle school/high school etc. I have seen kids who are just disruptive (doing anything but reading) during quiet reading time, and other kids who are so into their books that they don't even notice the disruptive kids. It annoys me when some teachers say reading evens out -- I think they just focus on the reading mechanics (reading, comprehension, answer x number of questions about the book) and don't encourage reading, because it is fun, informative, and is a wonderful world with imaginative stories.

That's cool, I was thinking there was some underlying semantical thing that confuses the issue. But I get the Harrison Bergeron aspect of what you're saying now.

This is my feeling about it as well. Fluency like arithmetic has a fixed level which we expect almost everyone to reach. So yes after a certain point the age at which reading starts loses significance. If however, early reading is just a sign of intelligence then obviously by the point that occurs the child will have moved onto other more significant achievements that will be noticeable.

Of all the readings in the 2nd post, I found the ERIC article most useful. The IQ levels in Table 1 are interesting -- basically if you know nothing else about a kid other than they are reading before K, you should revise your estimate of their IQ from 100 to 130. I.e., there is big news in the fact that a kid is reading early.

One of the other things I took from it is that *conditional on IQ*, reading levels mean revert, but that this isn't true unconditionally. In other words, if you take 2 kids with 130 IQs, where one is reading at K and one is not, there will be some convergence in their reading ability. But if you compare an early reader with a 130 IQ with a typical non-early reader with an IQ of 100, the former kid will still be well ahead of the latter in a few years. This all seems very intuitive.

It is possible that this research result got garbled by the K-12 community.

If you measure height with a yardstick, then height plataeus and evens out because almost everyone reaches 3 feet eventually. The same is true if the school builds the ceiling 3 feet above the floor.

I've always been of the opinion that it means nothing negative about a child's IQ if he/she is NOT reading early, but it probably means something positive is he/she IS. There did seem to be a bit in that article about kids w/o high IQs who were preocious readers, but not a lot (I skimmed). I have not met a child who was a self-taught, fluent reader before K who was NOT gifted, although I am told they are out there.

(When I say fluent, I mean fluent. Not Biscuit or Frog and Toad.)

What a great discussion. My DS, now a sophomore, was asking how he learned to read. Apparently, one of his current HS teachers knew him when he was in pre-K and remembered how DS used to carry a book with him everywhere.

The teacher asked my son who taught him to read so young, to which DS replied, "Nobody -- I just started reading." That's how we always explained it to him. "And then one day you were reading -- straight up reading."

Skimming some of those articles above seems to validate my suspicion that while our reading to him regularly certainly helped, he is the one who put it all together.

One of my absolute favorite video clips is where he's reading the instruction booklet from CandyLand. He was barely three at the time and read straight through without a hiccup -- and without having ever seen or heard it before. Something like, "CandyLand is a game for small children, many of whom are too young to read." He reacted right away to the irony. (And he was also tickled to death by the "whom" for some reason.)

The school staff that go on & on with the "they all level out" nonsense drive me up the wall. If the OP is still here, DON'T let them get away with that!

Dandy

Luria's work with preliterate peasants before and after literacy had been acquired led him to conclude that literacy actualized a kind of abstract thought that was entirely absent prior to literacy.

This work was not published by the Soviets for over 40 years because it was deemed insulting to peasants (a Marxist taboo). But his empirical results stand for themselves.

While, obviously, literacy isn't the be all and end all - preliterate societies invented wheels, agriculture and metallurgy literacy does appear to allow abstract concepts like 'tool', 'circle', 'rectangle' to emerge in a subject's consciousness.

Given all the above, I find the it illogical that educators effectively insist on making early readers 'wait in the lobby' until the majority of kids their age are reading instead of letting them proceed on with their educations once abstract concepts are more readily synthesized.

So one thing AR does is keep track of how many words total you read for the school year in the books you read and get tested on. Last year my son read 5 million AR words (not counting things he read that weren't tested by AR). The most in the entire school. Some kids read a couple thousand. They will never even out with him because the gap started at age 4 and his reading pace at this point is uncatchable.

At some point it evens out, though maybe not until HS or college. And take some of these reading levels with a grain of salt...middle kid was evaluated at a junior in college to graduate level in reading in 8th grade. What does that even mean? She should read PhD theses? I think not.

Did the school do anything special for her? No, but I don't think she has been damaged for life. Let the kid read outside school at his/her level. At some point, as they get older, they will be in with others who read/comprehend at that level and it will be better.

It is not the reading that is really the issue it is the Lindsey behind the statement.

Neither of my kids have been early readers. The oldest picked it up very quickly the younger is a bit slower but OK.

It kinda seems that way, because modern journalism and literature are written at an 8th-grade level. But hand the average adult some of the classics, and watch what happens.

Unfortunately, some schools are beginning to collect selected passages from classics and place them into anthologies... often designed around a theme providing social and/or political influence.

After reading possibly 5 - 20 pages of a classic, which has been removed from the context of the entire work, and transplanted into the context of the themed anthology, students may feel they have read and are familiar with the work. Rather than piquing a student's curiosity to read the works in their entirety, the net effect may often be inoculating or vaccinating the student against the classics.

Master of none, we did raise our expectations at some point. Middle kid is now in 11th grade and takes all AP/Honors (four APs this year, takes two foreign languages). This was the kid that didn't appear to be that bright when she was young, and I declared that she was not college material when she was four.

Her HS combined English/social studies course (offered 9th-12th for those in the gifted program) has a lot of high level reading and there are some very sharp kids in this class - makes for some great classroom discussions.

We also found out that you should raise expectations on all fronts. DH declared that middle kid wouldn't be able to keep up with athletics - even rec sports - beyond the age of 12. In 10th grade, she was the only sophomore to make varsity in her fall sport. She also plays a travel sport (a spring sport for HS), and is going on her 5th year of travel. So yep, we realized that we set expectations too low when she was little.