Revisiting the Fourth-Grade Slump among Black Children

Abstract

Nearly 30 years ago, Chall, Jacobs, and Baldwin introduced the fourth-grade slump to describe the unexpected deceleration of reading skills between first and fourth grades among children growing up in poverty and low-income households. Advances in our understanding of reading development and how race, racism, or other forms of discrimination are implicated in student achievement encourage another look at the slump among Black children. We reexamined the slump in a cross-sectional, heterogeneous sample (n = 757) of typically developing, Black children (ages 6–11 years old), most of whom were growing up in low-income households. As in the original study, we observed a downward trend in word reading and reading comprehension skills between first and fourth grades. However, unlike the original study, children demonstrated relatively weaker performance on oral language measures at each grade level. Implications for studying oral language and reading in Black children are discussed.