Seung Ok on Social Promotion

If there is a grey area involving a medical decision, I would hope that  a specialist in that field makes it.  So if a teacher who knows their students and knows the curriculum, makes a decision to pass on a struggling student - devoid of outside pressure - I'm okay with it.--- Seung Ok

 
It was so good to hear from Seung Ok, one of the early members of GEM, who has been busy at his new school. As usual, Seung drills deep - this time on social promotion. And note the comments he inspired, especially from Deb Meier.

When he says, "Have I ever socially promoted a child? Sure I have," I am in agreement, having done the same. The Ed Deformer policy of trying to "automate" such a delicate process - part of the litany of taking basic ed decisions out of the hands of teachers - is idiocy. But it also works both ways for ed deformers. When it comes time to pump the grad rates so they look good politically, they also take the decisions out of the hands of teachers by using gimmicks to socially promote kids.

Seung gets to the heart of it: Who is making the basic decision?  I had a battle with a new principal in 1978, a woman who had taught for 6 months, who took the decisions on promotion out of our hands. She wanted to hold as many kids back as early in the grades as possible so that when they took the tests in future years they would always be a year early (brilliant woman). So it is not just ed deformers. But she was data driven, hoping to use it to move her career, so she interdicted our decisions in order to create a system that manipulated the data. She turned our school into her own high stakes school decades before the ed deformers. I immediately saw the evils personified in our little den (it took another 6 years but this change was what led to my leaving the self-contained classroom - the infantry of teaching). One day I'll share a few stories on how I used to beat her system - I have to check if the statue of limitations has run out.

Like the ed deformers, she didn't really give a rat's ass as to what kids really were learning. She could be the mother of ed deform.

In today's world, if we want to get to the essence of ed deform, whether you talk Cathie Black/Dennis Walcott, the business types at Tweed, Teach for America, it comes down to not trusting professional educators but instead placing blame for past system failures on them.

Posted to NYCEdNews listserve by Seung Ok:

In Frank McCourt's humorous passage, he describes how a group of high school teachers creatively added points to a student's score to help him obtain a 65 on the NY state English exam. He was describing an event that occurred back in the 1970's. This may me think of the key differences between the social promotion that had occurred in the old days compared to the state sanctioned promotion encouraged by education reform ala Mayor Bloomberg and NCLB.  

When I first came into teaching, and during the era of Frank McCourt's career, there was a choice of 2 high school degrees.  A student could  opt for the Regent's diploma ( by passing all the state mandated tests) or the non -regents diploma (which just required passing the classes offered by the school).  Obviously, top colleges looked to the regents diploma for their selection criteria.

Combine this with the fact that in 2002 - when the United States still led all countries in the number of those obtainment of college degrees- the US census reported that only 27 % of all Americans held a bachelor's degree.  Specifically for whites alone, the rate was 37%. 

So, the majority of house owning families in suburban areas like long island lived self supporting and productive lives as small business owners, civil servants, plumbers and whatnot - without a college degree. The myth that college is the only route to success is repeated so often that it is accepted as doctrine.

Have I ever socially promoted a child? Sure I have.  I passed struggling students who have taken the same course multiple times, and obtained a 55 average instead of the 65 minimum standard for proficiency.  However, I can recall many more times that I have  failed a student who performed a 55 average, but had the potential be be an 80 student - but lacked the motivation and work ethic to perform in class.  The key criteria I used in making the decision, was whether that student would be helped by taking the class over again.  

The main difference in the social promotion of old and what is occurring today - is centered on who makes that decision.  If there is a grey area involving a medical decision, I would hope that  a specialist in that field makes it.  So if a teacher who knows their students and knows the curriculum, makes a decision to pass on a struggling student - devoid of outside pressure - I'm okay with it. It is similar to the decisions of a jury of our peers who have to dispense justice- even though it is an imperfect system. 

However, the social promotion policies of today derive not from educators but politicians and corporate ideologues who believe they know more than those specialists working in the schools. It is a one size fits all approach that brings social promotion to a massive and uniform scale with dumbed down tests and punitive pressures for schools with many high needs students.

Frank McCourt's description of teachers helping to artificially boost up a student's scores in a state test was indeed humorous, mainly because the consequences was not high stakes.  In other words, the graduation of that student , the closure of that school, and the livelihood of the teachers were not dependent on the that student passing the state exam. 

And there is a difference when that scale for "helping" students slides down from those that earn a 55 to 50 to 45 to 40 to 35.  It is a lot like comparing the speed limit posted on the highways and the actual speed most of us drive.  The exponential increase in risk in driving 10 miles over the limit than say 20 is stark - and it is society who will take the burden of that risk.

Dangers always arise when simple solutions are offered for complex systems and problems.  The focus on high stakes testing and evaluation is one such example.  We may argue that the particular child in Mr. McCourt's passage may never become a surgeon or engineer, but the institutionalized promotion happening in all the grades today - which are promoted by the likes of Mayor Bloomberg - are destroying the drives of those otherwise destined to become the surgeons and engineers of tomorrow. 

Seung Ok

Comments on Seung's piece

More on Leonhardt Piece and No More Social Promotion from the Womb

We met long time friends for a movie and dinner Sunday night - both retired teachers. We talked about the Dave Leonhardt NY Times business section piece the other day on paying certain kindergarten teachers $320,000 the other day? Our friends thought it was a positive piece, though there were things that made them a bit quesy.

Most people - even s lot of teachers - viewed that as a positive article. But I saw it as an ed deform piece that endorsed the Rhee firings and totally downplayed the real import of the Tennessee study - that class size was a major determining factor in making teachers better. Leonhardt mentionned class size in passing. Note that a major mantra if ed deform is that class size is irrelevant. I wrote about it in this piece:

Does NY Times' Leonhardt Distort Tennessee Class Size Study?

Today's Times had a gaggle of letters, all it seems critical of Leonhardt. How nice to be right.

The venerable Richard Rothstein, whose work forms the basis of the anti-ed deform movement, was the lead letter. Rothstein closes with:

Policies based on exaggerating school reform’s ability to ameliorate inequality leave most working families and their children unprotected. We need educational improvement, including better kindergarten, but also economic reforms — more job creation, greater protection of union organizing rights, higher minimum wages and more generous earned income tax credits — if we want disadvantaged children to have a fighting chance.

Edward Miller wrote:

But what makes for highly effective teachers?
Another important study may hold the answer. The HighScope Preschool Curriculum Comparison Study followed children randomly assigned to different preschool programs through young adulthood, with striking results. The children who learned mainly through playful activities fared much better at their work and social responsibilities than those in an academic instruction-oriented class.
Social and dramatic play in kindergarten develops patience, self-regulation, empathy and perseverance — the critical “skills that last a lifetime,” as Mr. Leonhardt puts it, but aren’t measured by multiple-choice tests. Yet teachers in thousands of schools are being told not to let children play in the classroom. That’s a recipe for long-term failure. 

Gail Rosenberg, one of our old colleagues wrote:

Our future adults should be expected to communicate with creativity and humor, as generous, thoughtful, caring learners and human beings. The development of these attributes must take precedence in early childhood. Test prepping and academic focus in the early stages of learning will never create the kind of citizens we want to embrace our future world. 

Anne Mackin says

Many thanks for this article, although I wish it had not played down other contributing factors, like class size. After all, we have more control over class size than the elusive “teacher quality.”

 Ashlee Tran said:

You grazed over the fact that early interventions for long-term benefits start even earlier than kindergarten — they begin in preschool. Notable longitudinal research has been done (like the Perry Preschool Project and the Chicago Child-Parent Center Program) on the effects of high-quality preschool programs. 

 Sorry Ashlee, they haven't figured out how to give a multiple choice test in the womb.


 No social promotion for your future child
Answer the questions correctly or you will be left back – in the womb.

Did Tweed Give Principals a Quota on Holdovers in Attempt to Bump Summer School Numbers?

UPDATED: June 18, 8am

THIS MIGHT NOT BE AS BAD AS IT LOOKED. HERE IS A MEMO FROM A PARENT:

Here is what the principals were told. It is actually a good policy.

"principals may presumptively promote two students without portfolio review by Community Superintendent; any additional promotion recommendations require that the principals send portfolios for review to Community Superintendents."


In the their own version of Monopoly, the NYCDOE seems to have given principals the equivalent of 2 Get out of Jail cards, at least based on this email I received from an elementary school teacher.

Norm, I wonder if this is happening all over the city:

As you know, principals were notified which students did not pass the state tests. There weren't given the actual scores, they just got a list of students with the phrase they "did not meet standards" next to their names. My principal was told she could only appeal two students of the few that did not get the benchmark test score. Even though more than two could have had portfolios assembled to appeal for promotion! How is that legal? Of course children who did not meet standards must attend summer school! Is the city trying to fund summer programs? I just wonder what other nonsense the DOE is cooking up in relation to the test score nonsense, considering twice as many students as last year did not meet the so-called criteria!!!

I was reading this on the train home from the rally yesterday when 3 teachers from an elementary school in Brooklyn got on. I showed them this email and they said it was true. That a 2 child limit for exemptions from being held over throughout the system, no matter the size of the school or the number of kids in danger. Hey, got to fill those summer school slots. Summer school is part of the ed deform blueprint and we can't go outside those lines.

Let us know if this is true in your schools. Better yet, if you can get ahold of any directive, send it along. Right now we are hearing that district supt are telling this to principals. Are they trying to hide the paper trail?

Bad photoshopping by me so don't blame David.
STRIKE THAT. DAVID CAME ACROSS WITH ANOTHER BEAUT!

-----
Make sure to check out recent posts on Norms Notes. Lots of juicy articles.
CORE Update: Emergency Board Meeting 6/15/2010
Class Size Versus Teacher Raises in Chicago

Pondering Legal Implications of Value-Added Teacher Evaluation

The Truth About Social Promotion

This was posted by Leonie Haimson at the NYC Public School Parent blog on August 10 when the mayor again played politics with the lives of children.

With tonight's Panel for Educational Policy due to vote on the extension of grade retention to the 4th and 6th grades, today is a good day to repost. Hopefully some people will sign up for 2 minutes tonight to emphasize some of the points Leonie makes.

As part of the Grassroots Education Movement's "The Truth About...." series of brochures, we may pamphletize (okay, so I made up a word) this post. Or include the concepts in a pamphlet on high stakes tests.

[Section added after posting
I know, I know. Many teachers want to be able to hold kids back when they deem it necessary. I do think there are times it is necessary. But that decision should not be based on some politician looking to make points. The blanket policy imposes policy from without but should be in the hands of the teachers and school administrators. What happened to school and principal empowerment? As a teacher I even resented my principal's takeover of this policy for her own political ends - holding kids back en masse as a way to game the high stakes tests so as to make the school look better. But gaming the test is what this is all about.]

Some myths and open lies about social promotion:

• Bloomklein ended social promotion (see credit recovery and drive-by diplomas)
• Children benefit from being held back (dropout rates rise)
• Research shows it works (BloomKlein cannot site one single research supported study)

The Mayor commits educational malpractice, once again

by Leonie Haimson

Today, the mayor announced he would extend his grade retention policies to 4th and 6th grades -- meaning that all NYC students through 8th grade would now face being held back on the basis of a single test score. According to Gotham Schools,

Asked about researchers’ claims that retention policies can raise the dropout rate, Bloomberg said he was “speechless,” adding, “It’s pretty hard to argue that it does not work.” Klein said that since 2004, when the DOE ended social promotion for third graders, support for its end has been “unanimous.”

In fact, the consensus among experts is overwhelmingly negative -- that grade retention hurts rather than helps students and leads to higher dropout rates. When the City Council held hearings the first time the Mayor proposed this policy, they could not find a single education researcher who supported it.

Yet the mayor and Klein manage to inhabit their own universe of spin; reminiscent to the manner in which Karl Rove described the Bush administration:

We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.

See the 2004 letter, signed by over 100 academics, heads of organizations, and experts on testing from throughout the nation, in opposition to the mayor's policy, when he first proposed 3rd grade retention, explaining:

"All of the major educational research and testing organizations oppose using test results as the sole criterion for advancement or retention, since judging a particular student on the basis of a single exam is an inherently unreliable and an unfair measure of his or her actual level of achievement. ...Harcourt and CTB McGraw Hill, the two largest companies that produce standardized tests...are on record opposing the use of their tests as the exclusive criterion for decisions about retention, because they can never be a reliable and/or complete measure of what students may or may not know."

Among the letter’s signers were Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, renowned pediatrician and author of numerous works on child care and development, Robert Tobias, former head of Division of Assessment and Accountability for the Board of Education and now Director of the Center for Research on Teaching and Learning at NYU, and Dr. Ernest House, who did the independent evaluation of New York City’s failed “Gates” retention program in the 1980’s.

Other signers included four past presidents of the American Education Research Association, the nation’s premier organization of educational researchers, as well as three members and the study director of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Appropriate Use of Educational Testing, and two members of the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council.

According to Dr. Shane Jimerson, professor of Child and Adolescent Development at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of over twenty publications on the subject of retention,

“The continued use of grade retention constitutes educational malpractice. It is the responsibility of educators to provide interventions that are effective in promoting academic success, yet research examining the effectiveness of retention reveals lower achievement, more behavior problems, and higher dropout rates among retained students. It is particularly disconcerting that a disproportionate number of students of ethnic minority and low income backgrounds are retained. Moreover, children’s experience of being held back is highly stressful; surveys indicate that by sixth grade, students report that only the loss of a parent and going blind is more stressful. “

The second time the DOE pushed through this policy, for 5th grade retention, Klein agreed to commission an independent research study of the results. RAND has been analyzing the data since 2005 and has produced several interim reports which the public has not been allowed to see, as reported in a chapter in our book, NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know, by Patrick Sullivan, member of the Panel for Educational Policy:

"....the reports contained the results of extensive surveys with elementary school principals, summer school administrators, and Academic Intervention Services (AIS) specialists. Summer school leaders were coping with the latest DOE reorganization and complained they could not get any specific information on the students assigned to their programs. AIS leaders found that small class sizes were the most effective tool to help struggling students but less than a third of at-risk children had access to smaller classes. Principals felt the retention policy relied too much on standardized tests and was damaging to student self-esteem. Most troubling of all: none of these findings had been made public."

Now, as Patrick points out in Gotham Schools,

"When we voted on the 8th grade retention policy last year they said the release date for the RAND study was August 2009. Now it is “sometime this fall”. Would that happen to be “sometime after the election this fall?” What are they hiding?"

According to the DOE spokesperson, " Preliminary results of the RAND study, which looks at the performance of third and fifth graders affected by the Mayor’s promotion policy over time and will include data from the 2008-2009 school year, were delivered to the Department of Education last year...."

If Bloomberg and Klein were really so convinced that their retention policies have been successful, they should be obligated to release the RAND findings before the vote of the Panel to approve their extension to even more children.

Rationality on Social Promotion is the Missing Ingredient

I really take issue with the fact that the writer of this piece opposes efforts to end social promotion. Social promotion is a big problem in many schools.
----anon comment on my post the other day Unsocialized Promotion

Anon missed the point. But then again this is the August doldrums and I probably wasn't too clear.

The point of that piece was that these are phony attempts to end social promotion and in fact under BloomKlein social promotion has soared through credit recovery, cheating, easy tests, drive by diplomas and all the other goodies that come with the mayoral control package which politicizes education.

The claims that somehow schools before BloomKlein were engaging in massive social promotion based on my experiences and contacts was simply not true.

As a self-contained classroom elementary school teacher during those years 1969-1985 I saw all aspects of the situation. My school only had social promotion in the graduating grade so 6th graders weren't left behind except for special situations. But in all cases, the policy was to hold them back at least once before they got to 6th grade. Sometimes they were left back twice.

Now I know there are people who say twice is not enough. How do you keep a kid who would be an 8th grader in a class of 5th graders forever if necessary? Anyone who works in a school knows that is insane.

All research as Leonie Haimson points out (The Mayor commits educational malpractice, once again) shows that holding kids over doesn't work in most cases and does more harm. So the case can be made that holding kids back at all is counterproductive. But I don't go that far and do believe some kids need more time.

The solution, given the rigid school structure we have, is to target kids behind and do what is necessary to bring them up. If they are resistant to doing any work or anything to help themselves I don't have easy answers. Sometimes leaving them back has the effect of throwing water in their faces - I had a few in the 5th grade that ended back in my class the next year and did mature in that way and the extra year made a difference.

Digression
The problem is we are locked into a graded system. From my earliest years I was against putting kids in grades as opposed to multi-graded clusters where there was a mixture of kids over a few grades and older kids could teach younger ones. Naturally, a class of this nature can be unteachable. So the 2nd part of my progressive reform movement (contrary to critics, we have never been status quoers) would be to put around 100 multi-graded kids in a cluster with about 6 teachers who would stay with them for 3 years. More another time.
End Digression

The BloomKlein extension of decision making on whether kids should be left back in the 4th and 6th grades moves that choice away from the school level. I've always been for the teacher – at least those with some experience (I know, I know, they barely exist).

I used to fight my own principal over her taking the basic decision making out of the hands of the teachers and making a blanket school policy for all that override the judgements of the teachers who worked most closely with the kids. Before she took over, we used to meet with out AP and be able to fight for the kids we felt holding over would not help. She took over in 1978 and instituted many of the test prep stuff we are seeing today and even went so far as to dictate what materials we could use in our classrooms.

I look at that as the beginning of the end for my sense of control over my classroom and it eventually led to my no longer wanting to teach self-contained classes, the true grunt work of teaching. Thus, in many ways me real teaching career ended in 1985, after which I became a cluster teacher. I never regained that passion or sense of involvement I had for the 16 self-contained classes I taught. (That experience is the reason Ed Notes was first out of the box in the UFT in 1996 talking about the evils of high stakes testing.)

The point is that the decision should be made at the teacher/school level, not by a dumb politically motivated policy by the mayor.

Unsocialized Promotion

Lots of reporting going on today over the politically tinged BloomKlein announcement they were going to end socialized promotion in 4th and 6th grades. Who knew Bloomberg was a socialist?

Never mind.

NYC Educator lays it on in his inimical way
Bloomberg Ends Social Promotion, Makes Tests So Easy Your Dog Can Pass Them

Followed by Leonie Haimson with the research to back up what she is saying.
The Mayor commits educational malpractice, once again

Maura Walz at Gotham Schools calls it "Shooting Blind."
Social promotion’s effect in New York City still largely unknown

Mulgrew over at the UFT basically approves ("Adding the fourth and sixth grades to the city's promotion policy is clearly a step in the right direction.") with the usual whine that he hopes the kids who are left back get the help they need - wink, wink.

Oh, we know what help that means.

Credit recovery, easy tests, phony stats, mirror fogging 101.

Kids managing to not get promoted, will have their families given a one way ticket to anywhere but here by Bloomie.


Out Takes
ICE is setting up a special blog focused on the upcoming UFT elections in January 2010. ICE will be working with TJC again and is also working to incorporate people from other non-caucus activist groups. Elements of the platform should be released soon.

Needed: people to distribute materials to people in their schools, both hard copy and through email and to be an advocate for the slate. Also people to run for AFT/NYSUT delegate (800 positions available). Don't worry about winning any of these as Unity has stacked the deck to make sure they dominate the AFT and NYSUT with their "winner take all" rules. Email iceuft@gmail.com if interested.

Warning: If there was a vigorous opposition to Unity Caucus, Unity Caucus would not have been able to force so many bad policies down the throats of the rank and file. The reality of the current UFT undemocratic structure, precludes winning many positions. This is about growing an opposition - building the infrastructure so that the UFT/Unity leadership will be dragged into making the democratic changes needed. The battleground starts in your own schools.

Social Promotion Under Bloomberg/Klein

Here is the true incarnation of social promotion - clearly, by their actions in giving Diane Dixon a job, BloomKlein support social promotion. And who is that nameless bureaucrat at the DOE who approved her? Any guesses out there?

The NY Post said:
The [DOE] stated, "Most importantly, Lt. Gov. David Paterson was mostly responsible.

No. More importantly, the DOE is as subject to politics as ever.

Blaming David Patterson for making a phone call - where's the accountability on the part of the DOE for saying "Yes?"

Can't you see the spin: Diane Dixon is qualified because she has proven that she can run (for a job.)

Leonie Haimson wrote on her listserve:

While thousands rally against the budget cuts to schools, and our new Governor David Paterson stands w/ Bloomberg to reject the state tax on the wealthy, saying that "I think the world that the teachers, the schools in New York City, knew, has changed," to justify these cuts, the NY Post confirms that last month he made phone calls to get Diane Dixon, his alleged ex-girlfriend a job at DOE.

Today’s story gives more details: Dixon was rejected as a CEC specialist , but then after Paterson made some calls, was hired as a District family advocate in D17 (under Martine Guerrier) at $50,000 a year. As the DOE says, “Lt. Gov. David Paterson was mostly responsible.”

Nice to know that these positions – as well as the money promised our schools as a result of the state’s highest court decision -- are considered politically expendable. How many others have been hired in this office – which the Mayor cites as showing how much he cares about parental involvement- to cement relationships with potential friends and allies?

The NY Post article is here: ED. DEPT. PATERSON CALLS GOT GAL A JOB

Test-Based Retention

Leonie Haimson responded to our previous post on social promotion (feh) with a very perceptive point:

Norm and others: you really ought not to refer to the administration’s policies as opposing social promotion; call it test-based grade retention. No one supports social promotion, and by calling it that, you’ve already bought into the Mayor’s line.

She also did the research I am too lazy to do in relation to the Alexander Russo piece on social- er – test-based retention that I referred to in the posting.

Leonie writes:

Alex Russo’s article is a bit out of date – he refers to Brian Jacob et al as supporters of this policy; more recently he has shown significantly increased dropout rates for those kids retained, as has the Chicago Consortium.

For links to the more recent Jacob research see eduwonkette (here).

For links to the Chicago studies, see our blog at On the fourth anniversary of the Monday night massacre; what have they learned?

Since then, there have been two authoritative studies, both conclusively showing that holding back kids hurts rather than helps them . See the Chicago Consortium report called
Ending Social Promotion: The Effects of Retention, which shows that third graders who were held back did no better than those who were promoted; and that sixth graders who were held back did even worse.

Even more pointedly, check out Ending Social Promotion: Dropout Rates in Chicago after Implementation of the Eighth-Grade Promotion Gate which concludes that eighth grade students who were retained increased their likelihood of dropping out by 29%.

Leonie Haimson
Executive Director
Class Size Matters

Social Promotion Blahs*

See latest update to this post here.

How does BloomKlein claim they empowered principals but then dictate from above decisions on who gets promoted or not? There are views on both sides on the part of teachers, who generally seem to come down on the side of using promotion as an arrow in their quiver (they have been left with precious few) to get kids who don't do much work to be motivated.

The non-worker is very different from the child who tries and struggles. If a child can't read at all - no skills after even 5 years in school even with the worst teachers then there is a problem like dysleksia. If the child is 2 years behind then there could also be a problem that no amount of holding the child back in yet another class of 25 or 30 kids will help make a difference.

When I found the graphic, it was attached to an interesting article by Alexander Russo on retention in Chicago which goes into the pros and cons and discusses the research – I don't pretend to absorb the implications, but it is worth a look-see at http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/3251976.html.

I asked George Schmidt for reactions and will add them to this post.

UPDATE, March 20: Leonie Haimson's response on Chicago is posted here.

Read NYC Educator (Get Tough But Pass Everyone Anyway) here on the 8th grade social promotion farce.

Manhattan borough PEP Rep Patrick Sullivan, the lone dissenting vote commented at the blog:

Like most people, Manhattan BP Scott Stringer and I don't think we should push kids into high school who are not ready. We don't support social promotion. Yet the proposal that Klein put forward for approval had no plan to provide services to the retained kids, let alone deal with the pervasive problems of middle schools. Panel members were asked to put faith in the "forthcoming" plan that DOE is developing to turn around middle schools. The end of the administration struck me as an odd time to start working on a plan.

I've looked closely at all the research on these programs to hold kids back based on test scores and pretty much across the board the research says they don't work. A very comprehensive study in the Chicago school system showed that the retained kids had higher drop out rates, the program overall did not help despite costing hundreds of millions to fund another year of school. We will see somewhere between 5,000 - 18,000 additional kids repeat 8th grade. Tweed has not even thought about where they'll put these kids in middle schools that are already overcrowded.

What we've been saying is to instead find these kids early and provide the remediation instead of waiting for them to fail. DOE has an $80 million dollar student achievement database and the most extensively tested student body in the free world yet they can't figure out which kids need help and give it to them. Instead of paying for another year of school, we should invest in creating middle school environments that are more attractive for both students and teachers - small classes, enrichment programs, real music, art, etc.

There's a lot more from Patrick and Leonie Haimson at the NYC Public School Parent blog.

Read Patrick’s lucid explanation of his vote on the new 8^th grade promotional policy here: 8th Grade Retention Vote at March 17th Panel for Educational Policy

Leonie's (in her words) somewhat less lucid account, including links to news stories, is here

last night at Tweed.

Both are worth reading.


Loretta Prisco, retired teacher and one of ICE founders writes to ICE-mail:

In my school for many years (until a new test-centric principal took all decision-making into her own hands), we made the decision to promote or hold back very carefully - teachers and supervisors and parents too without some self-serving political crap from a mayor or chancellor. And in fact as pointed out at NYC educator schools will cheat to get around the issue so they look better. Social promotion will be stronger than ever.

Retired teacher and one of ICE founders, Loretta Prisco writes on ICE-mail:
What is so amazing is that our current 8th graders were in 2nd grade when Klein took over. They have been the recipients (or should we say victims?) of his policies,curriculum mandates and personnel appointments and yet he takes no accountability for the fact that 8th graders cannot reach level 2.

Are we expected to believe that after 8 or more years of education that have not enabled students to achieve a level 2 on a standardized test, they will be successful in 6 weeks in summer school. Achieve in 6 weeks what couldn't be done in 8 years? Why not just cancel school and have them spend a few weeks in summer school? Throw in some Saturday sessions to guarantee success.

It is interesting to note that 5 of the 6 identified SURR schools were middle schools this year. Holding back 8th graders will definitively challenge middle schools even more - a challenge they will not be able to overcome. Are we looking at systematic closing of middle schools as we have seen in the high schools? A cause for more charters?

Middle schools can work. Classes of no more than 20, true advisor-advisee sessions, guidance support, good attendance improvement programs, a full gym program, intensive English classes for our ELL population, a full visual and performing arts program, health programs offered on site, professional development on working with the adolescent, teachers teaching within their license area, and providing the mandated services that our special ed. population deserves.

And we should be sending on 5th graders prepared for middle school. That begins with a substantial foundation in the early childhood grades. A full comprehensive program, low class size and further reduced for those who need more attention, intervention with struggling learners in kindergarten, before failure takes its ugly toll.