Deaf people 4th grade reading level? Real or a myth?

I was reading an article about a lawsuit in a Portland (Oregon) police case involving the "mishandling" of a deaf person when no interpreter was provided.  It is not the story I'm looking at but what people have commented. One person brought up the 4th grade reading level as a reason why so many culturally deaf people have poor English reading level skills. And that comment came from Chris Balduc, a former teacher of the Deaf and an advocate for the Deaf community in the Northwest.

As a Deaf man, former teacher of the Deaf and advocate for the Deaf community in the NW, I can confirm to you that many Deaf people graduate from high school with about a 4th grade reading level. ASL is their first language, which is quite different from English. English is difficult to master for them, given the communication barriers.

Many? How many? Sounds like a lot. Isn't Chris Balduc helping perpetuate the high school graduates' "4th grade reading level" myth? Maybe it's true? However, according to last year's ReDeafined Magazine article they've claimed to have "debunked" that myth.

According to Marc Marschark, the Director of the Center for Education Research Partnerships at NTID, the statistic appears in a 2000 study by Carol B Traxler, which purports that, after the analysis of SAT reading comprehension scores, the median (not the average) scores for deaf high schoolers were around the fourth grade level. And while the statistic is still a frightening one, it does mean that fifty percent of deaf high schoolers are reading above a fourth grade reading level.  Another thing to note is that this statistic is often leveraged as a way to speak out against certain methods of deaf education.  In reality, the scores were the same whether or not the student's primary mode of communication was ASL, SEE or speech, and regardless of whether he or she wore hearing aids, a cochlear implant or nothing. Check out Marschark's full interview with Hands and Voices on the subject here. 

The problem is that nothing was identified whether these deaf graduates came from regular high school, mainstreamed high school, oral-aurally supported schools, or school for the deaf with sign language as their mode of communication. 

But here's another monkey wrench thrown in

According to a performance audit on Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind showed dismal scores when compared to high school aged students having the equivalent 3rd or 4th grade educational level:

ASDB students’ MAP test scores showed that they start at a much lower level than national norms. Although limited growth occurred after 5th and 6th grades and continued into high school, it was not sufficient to bring students’ scores within reach of national norms. For example, by the 11th grade, ASDB students scored the same as the average 3rd-grade student would in reading and scored slightly below the average 4th-grade student in math.

How disappointing. So, perhaps the "4th grade reading level" isn't really a myth but a fact that many people tried to hide it?  What about the California STAR results that showed just as equally dismal the low scores? There are successes and failures on both ends. Getting into conspiracy theories do not help here, at least not with me. Deaf schools had their chances over the last two decades since DPN. For example, results in the California Standards Test (STAR) for deaf schools such as Riverside, Fremont have shown atrocious scores:

The underachievement of our state's deaf and hard-of-hearing students is of grave concern.

Only 8 percent of our deaf students and 15 percent of our hard-of-hearing students score proficient or advanced on the California Standards Test for English-language arts.

In math, only 10 percent of our deaf students and 18 percent of our hard-of-hearing students score proficient or advanced.

That was commented back in 2007. Has it changed today? You be the judge.