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Students who have been held back repeatedly will get a renewed shot at moving to the next grade under new regulations that the Department of Education has proposed.

When Mayor Bloomberg won control over the city schools in 2003, his first major initiative was to crack down on “social promotion,” or allowing students to move to the next grade regardless of whether they passed the year’s state tests. The ban first took effect in third grade in 2004 — enabled by Bloomberg’s purge of critics from the city school board — and extended to all tested grades in 2009.

The proposed regulations, announced today, would roll back that policy for a small and particularly challenging segment of the student population: those who are overage for their grade and have been held back multiple times.

Of the roughly 9,200 students who were held back last year, 1,200 fit into that category, according to the Department of Education.

Under the current promotion policy, principals aren’t allowed to advance students who failed state tests under any circumstance. The new regulations would ease that rule, Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky wrote in a letter to principals this week. (more…)