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Re “As for whether the Panel for Educational Policy will approve the measure, the mayor said it was “just a hypothetical that they wouldn’t.””

Too funny.

The mayor is out plant shopping at his local mansion and estate grounds center as we speak. May I suggest a rubber tree.

The last time Bloomberg ended social promotion, when he fired the two PEP members before they could vote against him, Bob Herbert wrote that about as many kids were held back as the previous year.

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. In fact, the research is overwhelming that this hurts rather than helps students. The idea that support for it is “unanimous” is so absurd its as though Klein lives in fairyland.

See our letter, signed by signed by over 100 academics, heads of organizations, and experts on testing from throughout the nation, in opposition to grade retention based on test scores.

http://www.classsizematters.org/retentionletter.html

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 20 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. “

Obviously, I stand in favor of research over “sending a message.” We should do what is best for kids, and the research is quite clear on this one. This seems to a case of truthiness overwhelming rational and informed thinking.

But I want to address Ms. Jennings comment. “In some respects it’s a moot point because there are so few students scoring at level 1.” I’m sorry, but that’s just assinine. It is only moot if there are *no* students scoring at level 1, and will not be any in the future. It is not the least bit moot for the chilldren and families of kids who *do* score level 1.

This is critically flawed thinking, and quite at odds with the very governing structure of this country. The fact that something is only an issue for minority of people or students does not make it unimportant, even if it makes it unimportant to Ms. Jennings. In a system with 1.1 million students, if just 1% of students scored at level 1, we would would be talking about *thousands* of students each year. Of course, the level 1 rate is far greater than 1%.

The issue here is not how many children this policy change impacts. We can agree that this is a policy that really only impacts the students at risk of being held back. The issue, therefore, is how this policy impacts those kids. It’s fine and dandy for Ms. Jennings to wave her hand and say, “There are so few of them that it doesn’t really matter.” After all, that’s the priviledge of sitting in the ivory tower. But the real question for those of us who want to improve education is how this policy impacts the students it impacts.

To be fair, this kind of marginalizing of certain problematic populations has long historical roots. We’ve traditionally let emmigrants and English langauge learners fail at high rates, ignore the needs of special education students and abandonned high-poverty/minority-dominated schools without too much thought. If students cannot test beyond level 1, even with all our the issues with out tests, who cares what happens to them?; Ms. Jennings attitude fits right into this long tradition.

To be fair, a handful of years ago, the Supreme Court made the same mistake. Rather than asking whether the burdens of a new law were too onerous on those whom they impacted, a majority said that they were OK because they did not impact that many people. The minority decsion called them out for this mistaken reasoning, and I can only imagine the sort of injustices that that majority — or Ms. Jennings — would allow because they only impact “few students.”

(Of course, I cannot for the life of me tell why Ms. Jenning is even quoted for this post. Does she bring special expertise or accomplishment in this area? Is she somehow shedding important light on the topic that others are not? Do Ms. Phillips or Ms. Walz so need a comment from a Columbia Doctoral student that they had to go with this one, regardless of its substance?)

InsiderSchools,

I did not mean to suggest that social promotion is a civil rights issue, but your comment here has convinced me that it is. (btw: though I did not address your first comment here, I did on my brand new blog. MoreThoughtful.blogspot.com)

I think that you biggest mistake is in conflating the issue of social promotion with the question of the meaning and potential variety of high school diplomas. We are not simply talking about 9th grade here, but fourth grade. Do you want to track some kids to vocational education in 4th or 5th grade? These kids are not even in junior high school yet! You’re not talking about an alternative high school track, but an alternative middle school and pre-middle school track. We used to do that — especially for immigrants kids — and we’ve long since decided that’s a very bad idea.

Next, I think that you example is absolutely crazy. We are not talking about the equivalent of the major leagues here. If you run the numbers, the majors are like being a professor at a tier 1 research university. We are not talking about professional ball, either. If we want to stick to a baseball metaphor, we might be talking about me vs. A-Rod in high school ball. The question is whether kids should be cut from their high school team for being atrociously bad. (Let’s be fair to me, though. I’ve lot a lifetime .500 batting average.) If a kid makes his high school team simply because he shows up, as opposed to because s/he has any skill, what happens next? Are we hurting him/her or sending him/her the wrong message? Would that kid be unable to figure out that s/he should find something to do with his/her life that does not involving swinging a bat at a thrown ball? Or would the kid be able to figure that out even if s/he weren’t cut?

So, I think you need to come up with a better analogy. I’m with you that we need to ensure that high school diplomas mean something, but social promotion does not generate high school credits — and therefore does not water down the high school diploma. We have different issues that water down the high school diploma.

But getting back to the civil rights issue. Yes, I believe that it is. And the courts agree with me. Students have a right to an education in virtually every state. Reading, riting and rithamtic are essential to citizenship and prosperity. I think that understanding the scientific method, algebraic thinking and the ability to see things from multiple points of view are critical as well. Furthermore, we’ve seen a virtually endless stream of reports that explain that employers are looking for the same basic skills as college professors, so there really is not a clear difference between college preparation and 21st-century vocational training. (btw: I’ve worked in a modern vocational high school, and the kids there needed math, reading, writing and the rest, too.)

So, the question — the only question — is whether social promotion generally hurts students or generally helps them. Historically, we had long periods without social promotion and had incredibly high drop out rates, especially among the poor and immigrants. Social promotion has been part of a movement that has — I think we’d agree — led to a lowering of the average mastery or attainment of high school graduates. However, we need to remember that lowering the average could simply be a product of bringing more kids further along. Does social promotion hurt the top kids? Does it lead to them accomplishing less?

I think that you have a fantasy where the alternative to social promotion is a world where all the kids finish high school with rigorous diplomas and mastery of the all the skills and content. But we know that that is not the case. The alternative to social promotion is more drop outs, and earlier drop outs.

InsiderKnowledge,

We agree that closing schools that serve low achieving children and replacing them with schools that have no desire to serve those students *is* a civil rights issue. We *do* need to do a better job of meeting their needs, and we need to pay attention to what happens to these (sorts of) kids when we replace their schools with these new models. But the fact that that is a civil rights issue does not prevent adopting policies that are known to increase the drop out rate without increasing real learning from also being a civil rights issue.

However, you continue to ignore what the research says about the impact of grade retention on drop out rates. Historically, we had kids dropping out in fifth grade or eighth grade. Now, virtually every kid stays in school through at least ninth grade. The alternative to social promotion is not simply kids taking longer to graduate. Rather, it is kids dropping out earlier. That’s the fact, jack. So, while I agree with your longer term goals, the research and history both show that ending social promotions does not get us there.

As for your last point, there are a lot of historical and transnational comparisons that do not account for different demographics and populations. SAT scores have not gone done for subgroups, for example. Whites score higher. Blacks score higher. Hispanics score higher. Low SES score higher. However, today a higher proportion of students from lower scoring groups take the SATS than 40 years ago. So, overall it looks like scores are going down, when scores are actually going up while access is improving.

People who complain about poorly prepared high school students compared to 40 years ago don’t realize that 40 years ago those kids didn’t get to high school in the first place. Are they poorly prepared? But we are doing more for them than we used to. Are we doing enough? Of course not. But let’s stay out of fantasy and fictionalization.