Nevada: Less than half of the more than 35,000 3rd graders read at grade level

June 30, 2026, Nevada superintendents push back on retaining third graders struggling to read - The Nevada Independent

Nevada superintendents are calling on state leaders to repeal a Read by Grade 3 policy that would require students struggling with reading to be held back by the end of third grade effective in 2028. 

It marks the first substantial resistance to the requirement since it was brought back.

Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo and state lawmakers in 2023 reinstated the Sandoval-era policy that requires third graders who are not reading at grade level be held back. The policy, passed in 2015 before Democrats spearheaded its repeal in 2019, was their solution to addressing elementary students' literacy proficiency rates. 

According to the latest state data from the 2024-25 school year, less than half of the more than 35,000 Nevada third graders read at grade level. Though the rate has been improving, it's still slightly below its prepandemic level.

Carson City School District Superintendent Andrew Feuling, president-elect of the Nevada Association of School Superintendents, said in a June 24 interview that while he and his colleagues support the goals of the state's Read by Grade 3 program, which includes literacy supports, research shows that retention may do more harm than good in the long run. He also argues Nevada doesn't have the funding to ensure the retention policy works as intended. 

One of the association's priorities for the 2027 legislative session is to repeal the retention mandate. 

"Kids who end up getting retained tend to be more disengaged once they get to high school, their dropout risk actually more than doubles. … It would make more sense to us that instead of retention, let's focus on how we can offer even more intensive support to students," Feuling said.  . . .

Ford said in a May 14 interview he would not repeal the retention requirement but expressed a willingness to look closer at legislation and see if any tweaks were needed. 

Ford's campaign didn't respond to multiple requests for comment on the superintendents' call to repeal the policy. 

The Read by Grade 3 program was launched in 2015 by then-Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, as a way to ensure students read at grade level by the end of third grade. 

But in 2019, under Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, lawmakers passed a bill, AB289, that removed the mandatory retention requirement, meaning that third-graders who had not reached grade-level reading skills were no longer required to be held back from advancing to the next grade.

The retention requirement was reinstated by lawmakers during the 2023 session as part of Lombardo's education omnibus bill, AB400. 

Nevada is one of 26 states with some kind of third grade literacy retention policy and among 14 states that require retention for certain students who do not meet the state's literacy expectations, Torrey Palmer, deputy superintendent for student achievement for the Nevada Department of Education, said at the State Board of Education's June 26 meeting. . . .