More than a dozen states now require that third graders who can’t read at grade level repeat the grade rather than advance to fourth, where every subject assumes literacy. The theory is sound. But in state after state, exemptions meant for a narrow set of students are being granted so widely that the policies aren’t benefiting the students they were designed for.
Arkansas, the state I know best, is the latest to confront this problem. I wrote earlier this year that its version of a retention law—called the LEARNS Act and modeled in part on Mississippi’s approach—would only succeed if exemptions are paired with mandatory support. This year was the first in which Arkansas enforced the legislation, and third-grade reading proficiency climbed from 35 percent in 2024 to 43 percent, according to recent data. But exemptions were granted at alarming rates in some places. In North Little Rock, for example, more than half of students who failed the reading standard were exempted and promoted. In Pulaski County Special School District, the same was true of roughly half of the roughly 200 students scoring at the lowest performance level. A provision meant for a narrow set of circumstances is being applied well beyond it.
Or take Ohio, whose “Third Grade Reading Guarantee” had worked well. Retained students made significant gains compared to peers who narrowly avoided retention. But lawmakers functionally repealed the law in 2023, because of political pressure. Now, the state has a massive loophole that permits struggling students to advance based on a parent request.
Something similar happened in Tennessee and Michigan. In the first year Tennessee’s retention law took effect, 60 percent of third graders fell short in reading, but only 1.2 percent were actually retained. In Michigan, exemptions were granted to students based on parental request or an existing individualized education program (IEP), and as a result, fewer than seven in 100 eligible students were held back. So like Ohio, Michigan simply removed the requirement instead of narrowing the loopholes.
The problem with all of this backtracking is that research on retention generally shows that it works. The foundational study of Florida’s policy found that students who were held back made substantial gains in reading proficiency compared to promoted peers, and that the gap widened in the second year. A follow-up study found that exemptions were a strong predictor of which low-scoring students moved on to fourth grade without those proficiency gains. And a later analysis that tracked retained students through tenth grade found that retained students took fewer remedial courses and had higher GPAs, compared to peers in the same grade. Two decades of research point in the same direction: Retention plus remediation improves academic outcomes, and exemptions prevent those gains.
Considering the state of American education, states should reverse this trend and restore the strength of their retention policies. Arkansas’s fourth-grade NAEP scores hit a 21-year low in 2024, for example, and the national trend isn’t much better. Third grade is when children stop learning to read and start reading to learn. A 2012 analysis of nearly 4,000 children found that 16 percent of students who aren’t reading proficiently by third grade fail to graduate high school on time. For proficient readers, it’s just 4 percent. And the gap widens for children living in poverty.
This is not an argument against exemptions themselves. Students who, for example, have significant disabilities or limited time in English instruction need a different bar. But as Arkansas’s education secretary, Jacob Oliva, said in September 2025: Low-scoring students who advance to fourth grade without real intervention will keep struggling regardless of the paperwork.
The fix is the same everywhere: Strengthen the rules. Most importantly, permit only good-cause exemptions. Second, require that those exemptions be paired with proven, documented, monitored supports. Arkansas, for example, already funds individualized reading plans, high-impact tutoring, literacy coaches, and a $1,500 family tutoring grant. Make these a condition of promotion for exempted students.
Mississippi requires this of every exempted student, and it is a large part of why Mississippi’s version of the reform has held up where others haven’t. Other states with retention policies should follow suit before exemptions leave their neediest students without the support these laws were designed to provide.
