What a conundrum.

There is no denying that grade-level reading proficiency is a precursor to academic success as students advance from one grade to the next. If a student can’t read on a third-grade level, learning and retaining fourth-grade material is simply unattainable.

This is why the Alabama legislature in 2019 passed the Alabama Literacy Act. Established to improve the reading proficiency of public school students in kindergarten through third grade, the act is written to ensure that all students are able to read at or above grade level by the end of the third grade. The teeth of the law is that third grade students unable to show sufficient reading skills will not be promoted.

The resources in the act, unlike other similar legislation we have witnessed in the past, are engineered for a successful outcome: This is no unfunded mandate. Students who demonstrate reading deficiencies from kindergarten and beyond receive appropriate help according to specific needs. Even better, parents are notified and involved in the development of a reading plan, including strategies and resources to use at home.

So far, all of this sounds productive and active in ensuring that Alabama students succeed at the highest level of their ability. The problem is that the law was passed in 2019, well before we knew what the full ramifications of the global pandemic would be. Now, with the legislation kicking into full force this academic year, students who may have struggled with reading in the classroom are now facing those same struggles after two years of intermittent virtual learning — something lawmakers pre-2019 never envisioned and accounted for. In other words, public school systems that never had the opportunity to fully enact the legislation could now face much larger numbers of students not grade-ready to advance.

The temporary solution, and one with almost universal appeal, is to delay the law until in-school learning has a chance to catch up.

But again, what a conundrum.

What is to be done for third grade students who are not reading proficient? Promoting them into the fourth grade is not a recipe for success. Already, studies show that this pandemic-generation of students are not as prepared as their counterparts pre-COVID-19, and in some cases by entire academic years. State officials earlier this year acknowledged that nearly one-fourth of students tested scored below the assessment cutoff score for promotion. To advance reading-deficient students now would be the epitome of adding insult to injury — the opposite of addressing the exact concern the legislature is trying to rectify.

This is one reason that lawmakers who agree on a delay can’t agree how long that delay should be. Yet with the session winding down, lawmakers don’t have time to agree to disagree.

There is no easy answer — we hope that legislators don’t simply cut the Gordian knot by simply extending implication with no additional resources, effectively writing off the generation of students they pledged to assist — but there are exemptions to promotion, if appropriately used, that could assist, albeit on a larger scale than originally written for.

Non-native English language learners and students with certain disabilities, for example, have access to intensive remediation resources that lawmakers should explore expanding as needed, even into the fourth grade. This is one consideration. There are others. None will be one-size-fits-all, and none will be perfect. But doing nothing — either by keeping the law status quo or enacting a delay with no new resources — is not an option.

The writing is on the wall for our current generation of third-grade students — the question is: Will they be able to read it?