Kindergarten

“Our second and our third graders stayed very stagnant; it was about exactly the same as where we were the year before. We've kind of hit a plateau,” Julie Clark with the Utah State Board of Education said of reading at grade level by the end of the 2023-2024 school year.

A lawmaker is concerned about liability and teachers’ limited time, but others worry a potty-training requirement would leave some students behind academically.

Utah has a goal of getting 70% of third-grade students reading at grade level by 2027. As of the end of the last school year, only 48% of third-grade students were reading at grade level.

Republican Rep. Robert Spendlove said the goal is to offer full-day kindergarten to all students statewide.