Research has repeatedly demonstrated that success or failure in forming a foundation of basic literacy in the early grades is a strong indicator of later academic success. According to the National Research Council, “academic success, as defined by high school graduation, can be predicted with reasonable accuracy by knowing someone’s reading skill at the end of third grade. A person who is not at least a modestly skilled reader by that time is unlikely to graduate from high school.”¹ Although a student’s reading competency develops throughout his/her school years, a critical period in reading development occurs between third and fifth grades. An emergence of comprehension difficulties seen at the midpoint of this period is sometimes referred to as the fourth grade slump. Some students may read adequately from kindergarten through third grade but begin to show severe signs of reading difficulty when they reach fourth grade.

Achievement Prep’s school program is intentionally and strategically designed to combat the fourth-grade slump by beginning our enrollment at this critical educational stage, providing students with a rigorous academic program focused on literacy intervention, remediation and acceleration. A fourth grade start allows us to strengthen academic weaknesses earlier in the development of our students and ensure a successful transition of our students to the “reading to learn” stage at fourth grade by maintaining a relentless focus on developing literacy skills.

1 National Research Council, 1998 (http://www.ed.gov/inits/americareads/ReadDiff/).