{"id":42521,"date":"2026-06-08T14:12:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:12:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=42521"},"modified":"2026-06-08T14:12:54","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T18:12:54","slug":"paul-l-thomas-comments-on-third-grade-retention-in-the-post-and-courier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/paul-l-thomas-comments-on-third-grade-retention-in-the-post-and-courier\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul L. Thomas comments on third grade retention in The Post and Courier"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Because of a 2024 law that retooled South Carolina&#8217;s elementary literacy education system, the state saw a threefold increase in the number of students who had to repeat third grade in 2024-2025 compared to the previous year due to low reading scores. While test scores tend to improve for students the second time in third grade, lasting impact is in question, and the practice of holding back students has other repercussions, reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.postandcourier.com\/education-lab\/sc-ready-third-grade-retention-ela\/article_3aefe198-2efe-4c16-a011-0e5ce4079ad5.html\">The Post and Courier<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Furman University&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/people\/paul-thomas\/\">Paul L. Thomas<\/a> weighed in on the value of reading assessments. Thomas, a longtime public school educator and professor of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/academics\/education\/\">education<\/a>, said standardized test outcomes are highly correlated with out-of-school variables like race and income, and students should not bear the negative consequences of repeating a grade. \u201cIt\u2019s just punishing them for our negligence,\u201d he said. Instead of holding students back, Thomas said the focus should shift to addressing poverty and homelessness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Furman&#8217;s Paul Thomas says South Carolina&#8217;s focus on standardized testing is misplaced. More attention should be given to out-of-school variables like poverty and homelessness rather than holding students back for low reading scores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":21825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,6,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-in-the-news","category-the-post-and-courier"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42521"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42523,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42521\/revisions\/42523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}