Why do the reading levels of Maryland’s (and Baltimore’s) third graders vary so widely – and not necessarily by income level?

A Northern Virginia-based education advocacy group yesterday sent us an online tool to compare Maryland students on reading proficiency and they hooked us with this factoid:

The Education Consumers Foundation compared Woodridge Elementary in Prince Georges County and Lyndhurst Elementary in Baltimore City.

The schools have roughly the same percentage of kids qualifying for free and reduced meals (88.7% for Woodridge and 89.6% for Lyndhurst).

But the Prince George’s students had 2012 reading proficiency rate of 92.7%, while at the west Baltimore school only 36.4% tested “proficient.”

We don’t know too much about the Education Consumers Foundation, which describes itself as a non-partisan, non-profit group whose aim is “to improve education by making the facts of local school performance understandable to local parents and taxpayers.”

(It appears to be oriented toward promoting the Direct Instruction technique as the solution for these inequities.)

In any case, those with an interest in education and equity may want to check out the data, which the foundation says it gets from state databases.

(Readers may also have thoughts on whether the Woodridge/Lyndhurst comparison is fair or meaningful or how to understand the disparity. Noodle around with the data and you can find all sorts of interesting trends.)

In an odd coincidence, it turns out city schools CEO Andrés Alonso is in Indianapolis this morning talking about this very subject – improving 3rd grade reading scores and closing the achievement gap.

According to the agenda for the Annual Fall Conference of the Council of the Great City Schools, he’s speaking, along with Oakland schools superintendent Tony Smith and Ralph Smith, senior vice president of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, at a panel entitled “The Campaign for Grade Level Reading: Oakland and Baltimore Take on a National Movement.”