Longstanding gaps in literacy rates in the Cambridge public schools have created a sense of urgency for addressing the problem. Frustration with the gaps led two School Committee members to move to hold back third graders who did not meet standards. A vote on the motion was deferred, but there are some in the community who are calling the literacy gap a societal crisis that must be resolved now.
“There’s a pervasive culture that is accepting of some groups of kids not reaching their full academic potential, and for some people, the status quo is okay,” said Richard Harding, a member of the School Committee and a co-sponsor of the motion to hold third-graders back.
Anthony Galluccio, former mayor of Cambridge and chair of the school committee, said “Cambridge has a very long history of race and class issues.” Inequities in the school system have persisted in part because the district has used “certain programs as mascara to make schools look more balanced,” without addressing the root of achievement gaps, Galluccio said.
“I think schools have historically been okay with failing if they’re failing kids who don’t have advocates,” agreed Tony Clark, the co-president of My Brother’s Keeper, an organization dedicated to addressing opportunity gaps for young men of color. “And, I think that now it’s a moral issue, and there are more kids who are non-Black, non-poor, who need services,” Clark said.
Only about 60 percent of Cambridge third graders fully meet reading proficiency goals, as assessed by Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) scoring. Of these, 76 percent of White third graders met or exceeded grade-level reading expectations on last year’s MCAS , while only 33 percent of Black students and 46 percent of Hispanic and Latino students did. Outcomes are similar by other high-need groups; 30 percent of Students with Disabilities and 41 percent of current and former English Learners meet proficiency. This demographic pattern persists for later grades as well.
Achievement gaps based on racial and socioeconomic groups have persisted in Cambridge for decades, despite the district spending more per-pupil than all but a handful of districts. State testing data show the district’s low-income students, students of color and students with disabilities perform lower on measures of literacy.
The oldest data from the state’s current MCAS system is from 2017, when Massachusetts transitioned to “Next Generation Tests,” from its older method, “Legacy Tests.” That year, 72 percent of White students were meeting or exceeding third grade reading expectations, compared to 37 percent of Black students, 13 percent of Hispanic or Latino students, and 18 percent of Students with Disabilities.
Specific scores from the old and new MCAS systems are not comparable, according to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Middle School Education, but older data did display similar achievement gaps along racial and socioeconomic lines.
Annual comparisons of third grade ELA testing show that the number of students not meeting grade-level reading expectations has not improved in recent years. That number has stayed relatively stagnant, at 9 percent in 2022 and 2023, and at 10 percent in the last two years.
The district did make a full recovery in its general MCAS data after the pandemic, which it was praised for in an equity audit conducted on the schools. Superintendent Dave Murphy attributed this to the work of educators.
The greatest improvement can be seen among students who partially or fully meet reading expectations. The number of third graders who partially meet expectations fell by four percentage points from 2022 to 2025, while the number of students overall who meet expectations rose by seven percent during that same time frame.
Agreement on the problem, but not the solution
While many stakeholders agree the literacy gap is a concern, how to close it is less clear. Holding back third graders who lack reading proficiency, with exceptions made for students who are English Learners or are on Individualized Education Plans (IEPs), drew resistance from a number of public commenters, many of whom were representatives from the Cambridge Education Association (CEA), the teachers’ union.
The resolution is “another example of going to an extreme and thinking that there are silver bullet solutions to some of the biggest challenges that we face when we’re trying to educate all children,” said Chris Montero, president of the CEA.
Still, the data demand serious intervention, said Eugenia Schraa Huh, a CPS parent and former school committee candidate. “I don’t think I’m in a position to say whether or not retaining third graders is the way. But what I like is that it’s extreme, because I think this is an extreme problem,” she said.
Anne Coburn, also a CPS parent and former School Committee candidate, disagreed, saying retention “should not be a blanket policy.” Coburn argued that parents should be empowered to hold their children back as “a pathway forward.” Coburn has a daughter with dyslexia who repeated Kindergarten when she entered the Cambridge school system, a decision which Coburn said was helpful to her daughter’s educational journey.
The district’s policy says “Retention should be considered a last resort and will take place only after very careful consideration and implementation of a retention intervention plan.” At the elementary level, parents/caregivers can make the final decision on retention, as long as the student has not completed a grade successfully, according to the policy.
But at the March 3 meeting of the school committee, some committee members and public commenters expressed concern that retention impacts a student’s sense of belonging and confidence.
Parents seeking to hold back their own child often face “a lot of resistance,” in the name of protecting the socialization of the child, Harding said. Galluccio agreed with Harding that retention is discouraged. Both said retention is a common measure of accountability in private schools.
Elizabeth Hudson, who co-sponsored the motion, sees the stigma differently. “The only thing more embarrassing than being in third grade and being held back is being in ninth grade and reading at a sixth-grade reading level, and you know it, and your peers know it, and your teacher knows it,” she said.
So while retention is not her goal, she thinks it might be necessary. Her co-sponsor Harding said, “In a perfect world, no one would be retained.” But retention could serve as an “accountability system” to address literacy urgently. Galluccio also thinks the threat of retention could serve as an incentive for families to engage in steps such as out-of-school instruction: “To Hudson and Harding’s point, you have to have enough teeth in it.”
One skeptic is Clark, who said the motion “didn’t really seem thought out.” While it could work on a “case by case basis,” he thought retention won’t be effective if a student is put back in the same environment.
Galluccio said he’d “rather a kid get caught up” even if they have to be retained, as long as the district can also show it has a “strong remediation plan” to provide additional instruction to the student.
However, Murphy said “it is rare when retention in an elementary school grade level is, in fact, in the best interest of an individual student” and that the larger conversation should be about positioning students to be ready for the next grade level without retention intervention.
Individualized instruction for all
There are a variety of approaches to help keep kids from being held back, said stakeholders contacted by Cambridge Day. Individualized instruction was cited by several. “Every kid should have an IEP,” Galluccio said. (IEPs are Individualized Education Programs, a custom plan for specialized instruction of students with disabilities).
Fred Fantini, who served on the School Committee for 40 years, echoed the idea of “individual success plans for every student.” He said some schools in Cambridge already excel at creating plans like these. These learning plans would involve regularly assessing each student’s progress with their teachers and caregivers.
Another avenue would be letting families be more involved with education plans for students. It’s an area that could be included in the district’s next contract with CEA. “We’re proposing a lot of stuff when it comes to family engagement,” CEA President Montero said. “The good news is that there are examples of that happening in the district already.”
Tutoring and other out-of-school instruction also had support from various leaders. Galluccio and Fantini support Saturday morning remediation sessions. Galluccio said the district needs to create incentives to students and families to engage in remediation, citing The Cambridge-Harvard Summer Academy, where family work hours were accommodated and students were provided extra credit.
Jordan Harvey, Executive Director at Tutoring Plus, an evening tutoring center based out of Fletcher Maynard Academy, said that students need to have their emotional needs met before they can engage in efficient remediation. According to Harvey, 96 percent of students in the tutoring center are classified as “high need” and almost a third of them are on IEPs.
Harvey also pointed to the difference between reading and comprehension, when literacy rates and solutions are considered. In the case of the younger children at Tutoring Plus, “if you listen to the student read, they sound like they’re reading fluently, but if you ask them questions about the actual reading comprehension pieces, they’re really not able to tell you what they read,” Harvey said, which has allowed certain students to slip under the radar.
That lack of district accountability to its literacy goals was raised as a factor by some observers. Fantini said the district is well-positioned to address literacy, but “what we probably are lacking is the sense of urgency and fidelity.”
Ensuring literacy for all students should be a “key ingredient” of each school’s improvement plan, Fantini said, with updates every two years by each school’s administrators.
“What worries me the most is as the city gets wealthier… it will be easier to cover up for the lower income kids, because you’re going to have more kids going to Ivy League schools and going to great colleges,” Galluccio said.
A photo caption in this story was updated to correct Rahn Dorsey’s title.
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