2nd grader in Kumon Reading for 2 years got low FAST reading test results—confused and looking for perspective/advice
Hi everyone, I’m looking for some honest perspective and advice from parents or educators.
daughter is in 2nd grade. She has been doing Kumon Reading since the beginning of kindergarten (2 years total) and started Kumon Math a year ago. When she started kindergarten, she could barely read simple words. Over time, her fluency and pronunciation improved a lot, and her kindergarten and 1st-grade teachers always gave feedback that she was reading ahead of her class.
My
She is currently at Kumon Reading Level BII (equivalent to 2nd grade). However, her recent beginning-of-year FAST assessment results (CBMreading and aReading) came back surprisingly low—around the 30th percentile in our district and 38th percentile nationally.
Her 2nd-grade teacher isn't overly concerned because my daughter is hard-working, well-behaved, doing well in writing, and scored in the 91st percentile for Math (aMath), which is consistent with previous years. But my husband and I are very stressed and confused by this reading score.
Keeping up with Kumon homework on top of her schoolwork and weekday sports classes has been challenging and stressful. Seeing her score below average in our district after 2 years of Kumon Reading makes us doubt our approach:
- We are a bilingual family. We speak our native language at home, and she also learns reading/writing in our native language outside of school. We’ve read English books to her since she was 4, and she generally loves reading at home and school. My husband thinks speaking our native language at home is causing cognitive overload and that we should switch entirely to English.
- I’m starting to feel like Kumon Reading isn't actually helping with deeper reading comprehension, even if it helped with early phonics.
Is Kumon Reading actually effective for 2nd-grade comprehension and school tests, or is it mostly just drill work? Could bilingualism at home be affecting her test scores at this stage? And what kind of professional (reading specialist, ed psychologist, etc.) should we talk to if we want to figure out what's going on?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!