Members of both chambers of the Oklahoma Legislature have now advanced legislation to improve the state’s abysmal reading outcomes by focusing on early intervention in grade school and ending social promotion of third-grade students who read years below grade level.

Senate Bill 1778, by state Sen. Adam Pugh, would allow students in the first and second grade who read far below grade level to be placed in a “transitional grade” class the following year or into “pullout programs” that provide them much more reading instruction. Third-grade students who end the year reading far below grade level would be required to repeat the third grade.

“That’s the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ option,” said Pugh, R-Edmond.

Pugh said retention is intended as a last resort and the legislation focuses on early intervention in lower grades to bring children up to speed before retention becomes necessary.

“The goal is if we get everything else right, if we do everything in our power, we don’t get a kid to that point,” Pugh said.

He noted that Oklahoma currently provides $17.5 million for intensive reading efforts and said he wants to add another $50 million to that total this year.

SB 1778 contains some limited exemptions to the retention mandate, including for students with disabilities or those who speak English as a second language who have had just one year of English instruction.

But Pugh warned against expanding those exemptions. He noted that prior versions of a third-grade retention law in Oklahoma eventually contained so many exemptions that most children were socially promoted to the fourth grade. In recent years, he said 93 percent of children who read far below grade level were still promoted to fourth grade.

“The exemptions, as you know in this building, they start small and narrow and they grow and everybody gets an exemption, and all of a sudden we’ve put a lot of effort in and we’ve done something hard but we’ve diluted all of the ferocity out of it because we’ve exempted everybody,” Pugh said. “And that’s the position we were in previously.”

SB 1778 passed the Senate Education Committee on a 7-1 vote. The bill will next be heard by the Senate Appropriations Committee.

House lawmakers have also advanced reading legislation from committee.

House Bill 4420, by House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, requires third-grade students to score above the “below basic” level on the statewide reading test before they can be promoted to the fourth grade. In effect, the bill would require that students read at a second-grade level before starting fourth grade.

Hilbert noted that about 30 percent of Oklahoma fourth graders are reading at a first-grade level or below, based on state test results.

SB 1778 would not take effect until the 2027-2028 school year, while the House version would be implemented starting in the 2026-2027 school year.

National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests show that only 23 percent of Oklahoma fourth-grade students scored at or above proficient in 2024, meaning students were meeting grade-level expectations. Only two states did worse.

Oklahoma’s fourth-grade student performance on the NAEP reading test was above the national average in 2015 but is now far below that average despite massive spending increases in recent years. Total Oklahoma public-school revenue from all sources—including local, state and federal funds—has surged more than $3 billion since 2018, rising from $6.3 billion to $9.5 billion, yet academic outcomes have steadily declined.

[State Sen. Adam Pugh is pictured above. Photo credit: Oklahoma Legislative Service Bureau]