There was a slight decrease in third-grade reading between the 2021/2022 school year and the 2022/2023 school year, although the percentage is a near ten-percent increase from the 2020/2021 school year.

Third grade reading is considered fundamental to student success because in fourth grade students shift from learning to read to reading to learn. Education experts and partners who helped inform this measure agree that while third grade reading is critical, reliable data to assess third grading remains challenging. Additionally, discrepancies by race in student outcomes persist with 85.6% of white students at or "Approaches Grade Level" or "Above" in Third-Grade Reading compared to 69.3% of Black students and 67.7% hispanic students. SA2020's data by race requires an understanding of historic and systemic racial inequity. Female students also outpace male students—86.3% to 79.7%. SA2020 uses sex and race identifiers from each source. This means across the indicators you may encounter various ways in which a particular population is identified. SA2020 promotes best practices in collecting inclusive demographic data.