October 16, 2011 in City

Social promotion puts students on rough path

Passage leaves teachers, parents with tough decisions to make

Jody Lawrence-Turner The Spokesman-Review

Tags:Boundary County Middle SchooleducationIdaho Department of Educationmiddle schoolsocial promotionSpokane Public SchoolsSue ChapinTyler Thompson

Kathy Plonka photoBuy this photo

Tyler Thompson talks about his grades with his mother, Kristi Thompson, at their home in Sandpoint on Sept. 23.
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Despite failing nearly every class since the sixth grade, Tyler Thompson is now a freshman at a Sandpoint high school.

When his mother questioned school administrators in two North Idaho school districts about why they were continuing to send her son on to the next grade level every year, she remembers their explanations focused on his size and age – he’s 15 years old, 6-foot-5 and built like a linebacker.

When Kristi Thompson asked Tyler why he didn’t try harder in school, the teen told her, “They’re going to pass me anyway, Mom.”

The decision to move a student from grade to grade despite a lack of academic achievement – commonly referred to as social promotion – has been controversial for decades. Although President Bill Clinton called for a ban on the practice in the 1990s, the decision to end it remains at the state and local levels.

Educators and parents are reluctant to admit it happens. But Kristi Thompson worries her son will flunk out of high school with a fifth-grade education.

“I just feel the whole system has failed him and I can’t get him out of it,” she said.

Advocates for social promotion argue that holding a student back does little for their future academic achievement and is not cost effective. Those who are against promotion say it sends the wrong message about being rewarded without working. And, they say, teachers have to spend more time with an unprepared student, and the practice sets up the student for failure.

More than half the states allow the practice, according to the U.S. Department of Education. But as achievement and high school graduation gain emphasis, more states are ending social promotion. Governors in Florida and Nevada announced plans earlier this month to end the practice, at least in certain grades.

Idaho education officials hope to eventually end social promotion with a new middle school credit system. The statewide practice that began last year directs school districts to require seventh- and eighth-graders to pass 80 percent of their classes before promoting them to high school.

“The perception was out there that middle school students were going to move on regardless,” said Rob Sauer, Idaho Department of Education deputy superintendent. “They didn’t think middle school counted, and they developed some really bad habits.”

Washington has no specific law regarding achievement in middle school, but Spokane Public Schools’ board says social promotion has ended effective this school year, and the district administration has created several intervention programs designed to catch failing students early.

“We have a lot of programs in high school to help kids be successful, but that’s almost like parking an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff instead of building a fence at the top,” said Sue Chapin, Spokane Public Schools board president. “We want to catch kids before they get to a place where their failure is hard to get out of. We want to intervene early.”

Tyler’s story

Tyler is quiet and awkward. He has a hard time making friends, and despite his stature says he’s often been a target of bullies.

He rarely smiles. During a recent interview, Tyler was blunt: “I don’t like school.”

Tyler’s grades started to falter beginning in the fifth grade in the Lakeland Joint School District in Rathdrum, and through middle school in the Boundary County School District.

Frustrated, his mother pulled her son out of school in seventh grade so she could home-school him, she said. But a week later, his dad, Ken Thompson, was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Ken Thompson died within a few months. When Tyler went back to school, he was repeating the seventh grade.

Although Boundary County Middle School Principal Dick Behrens couldn’t discuss Tyler’s situation specifically, he said whenever a middle school student is failing educators try to intervene.

“Starting about midterm, we begin to identify students who are not successful,” Behrens said. “There are before- and after-school tutoring opportunities. We also try to find something to engage the student in.

“Most of the time if a student fails a class, they are refusing to do the work,” he added.

Tyler’s records from the eighth grade reflect that assessment.

One entry on his report card reads: “Does not turn in work – I gave him several opportunities to turn it in, but he didn’t want to.” That comment was followed by similar remarks from other instructors, according to school documents provided by his mother.

Behrens said that deciding whether to hold a student back or socially promote him or her is “gut-wrenching” for any educator.

“We try to weigh things,” Behrens said. “We look at attendance and behavior issues. Is a student learning? One of the biggest things we look at is how a student’s doing on the Idaho Standards Achievement Test. We also consider age. Having a 16-year-old in a building with 11-year-olds doesn’t really work.”

According to his ISAT scores from middle school, Tyler was proficient in math, science and language usage, and advanced in reading, documents show.

The teen is now attending Lake Pend Oreille Alternative School in Sandpoint. While Tyler was not inclined to put forth an effort at school in previous years, this year is different.

Not only does he need to pass his classes to get a high school diploma so he can fulfill his dream of becoming an auto mechanic, but there are also legal consequences.

When he was in the eighth grade, he pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance for taking some of his mom’s pain pills.

The felony conviction will go away if he stays out of trouble, but one of the conditions of his probation is doing well in school.

Said Tyler, “If I try my hardest and I still fail, then there’s nothing I can do.”

Ending social promotion

Nearly 60 studies have been written about the pros and cons of promotion versus retention, according to one report.

Generally, “flunked students perform worse and drop out of school at higher rates,” according to an analysis by K12 Academics, a national education resource website. “For those held back two or more grades, the dropout rate is nearly 100 percent.”

In contrast, according to the U.S. Department of Education, “Research indicates, and common sense confirms, that passing students on to the next grade when they are unprepared neither increases student achievement nor properly prepares students for college and future employment.”

No national data is kept regarding social promotion, and neither Idaho nor Washington has any statewide statistics. Inland Northwest school districts reluctantly admitted it occurs, but they don’t track official numbers.

The U.S. Department of Education concluded the result of either retention or promotion is “unacceptably high dropout rates, especially for poor and minority students.”

The key to helping students succeed in school is intervention, early and often, educators say.

Idaho, for example, requires districts to offer intervention programs as part of its new middle school credit system – one-on-one or group instruction based on the individual’s learning needs, state officials said.

The first check of students is done six weeks after the school year starts.

“I would be cautious with social promotion now that we have a program in place,” said Sauer, of the Idaho Department of Education. “Students are going to be held to a higher standard. If we promote them without the skills necessary, then we are setting them up for failure.”

That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, however.

“We obviously need to have a mechanism in place that allows for an alternate route and flexibility,” Sauer said. “Sometimes there are extenuating circumstances and we’d be remiss if we didn’t take those into consideration.”

One-third failing

Social promotion became an issue for Spokane Public Schools after the administration realized a third of high school freshmen were failing one or more classes at the end of the first semester, officials said.

The school board took a stance to end the practice effective this school year. “As a board, we really talked about the fact that the kids who fail in high school didn’t just start failing in high school,” said Chapin, the school board president. “High school is just part of the continuum.”

The district is taking the approach that “the minute students get off track in middle school there’s going to be intervention,” Chapin said.

Although the district’s budget had to be cut this year, helping middle school students meet academic marks was made a priority.

Individual Credit Advancement Now, or ICAN, requires students who don’t pass math or language arts to stay after school for tutoring. It will involve Spokane Virtual Learning as well as their classroom teacher.

In addition, a new assessment tool tests students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades in math and reading, “so we can catch kids who are falling behind sooner,” Chapin said.

There are also summer school programs to help students catch up in core curriculum areas.

“This is a culture change. Years ago the middle school mantra was ‘nurture the social and emotional,’ ” Chapin said. “We’re still doing that, but more.”

24 comments on this story so far. Add yours!

DHF on October 16 at 6:23 a.m.
There are two old sayings. If a pupil hasn’t learned then the instructor hasn’t taught. or you can take a horse to water but you cant make it drink. Where does (I dont like school fit) Maybe if they had more programs like Auto Mechanics or trades then kids like this might make something of himself. I have known kids who were not book smart who did not excell in school but one that comes to mind. You give him a Computer and he can do things that I can only dream about. Rebuild them, diagnose them, fix them. program them. The only good thing is thank God for spellcheck. Maybe they need to look into something that along with studies that would be an incentive to learn. No easy answer.
greyhound2 on October 16 at 7:53 a.m.
Not only is social promotion bad for the student, its bad for everybody else, as questions regarding the validity of a high school diploma come under question. Did this person learn anything, or just sit in a chair for 12 years?
claygirl44 on October 16 at 8:43 a.m.
Dysgraphia. Find a way to take tests using little round circles, multiple choice, offer oral testing. He’s smart, just not test-able. Dysgraphia means he lacks the fine motor skills to write with a pen or pencil, deemed so important by our educators. But he can build things, weld, drive big trucks, use math for designing things, work outside with trees, take care of animals, sing, take photographs, put cars back together, learn to cook, lots of things. My kids didn’t get left behind when they barely graduated from high school, they moved forward with careers and life-long skills. It was not an easy path, just different.
Oly on October 16 at 9:50 a.m.
I wonder if the Mom would have willingly accepted retention when her son failed the year for the first time? In many cases, the parent refuses to listen to the teacher, counselor, and/or principal’s recommendations.
Scottcycle on October 16 at 10:59 a.m.
It seems as though the teachers and school administrators are in a no-win situation regardless. If they flunk the kids, more than half the parents will be angry at the school and blame it on them. If they pass the kids on via social promotion, then their failure to achieve in the future is still the school’s fault.
oneanddone on October 16 at 11:31 a.m.
If your kid fails in school blame yourself. A) You’re dumb and your kid is a chip off the old block. OR B) You are an ineffective parent and advocate for your child. Advocating for your child in school does two things. It makes the teacher aware that you’re not going away and it shows your kid that education is important to you. Don’t blame the system. With this kid, as far as the mom is concerned, first the school system failed him, now society has let him down. If the press covered this BS honestly, instead of attempting to stir up controversy, then more lousy parents would at least try harder. I’m all for directing kids into occupation tracks, as they do in most other countries, but I can hear the ACLU demolecularizing as we speak. Fix that and maybe something could be done. Oh, and ANYONE who’s ever welded knows full well that fine motor control is an absolute necessity. Try again mom.
Hunterman on October 16 at 12:54 p.m.
I knew a guy just like Tyler. Hardly ever smiled, not interested in learning…until he got on antidepressants. He smiled a lot. He loved learning and got good grades. Kids loved him. He is now successful.
gmorton on October 16 at 1:19 p.m.
Article:
“The district is taking the approach that ‘the minute students get off track in middle school there’s going to be intervention,’ Chapin said.”
The only form of intervention necessary is for the school to expel the student and tell the parents, “Keeping your child in this school is serving no purpose. He’s wasting his own and our time and the taxpayers’ money. You should consider enrolling him in a school with a different curriculum, or perhaps in some kind of appreticeship program.”
Of course, actually having viable alternatives would require replacing the present monolithic, bureaucratic public school system with a diverse system of competitive private schools offering different curricula and catering to students with different abilities and interests.
SpokyDaBear on October 16 at 1:46 p.m.
Why doesn’t she help her son with his school work? If she really cared about his education she would be there helping him succeed.
The_Seer on October 16 at 2:45 p.m.
gmorton is so right. It really looks like Tyler and his mother have funds for tuition at a private school, like most people in North Idaho.
Waiting until mid-quarter to intervene is most of the problem. I print out progress reports for students each week who have missing assignments/test scores that reflect poor preparation and the students must return them signed by a parent/guardian. Once they fall below 70% in the class they are required to attend tutoring twice weekly before or after school until their mastery has improved. When you start taking away the free time of an adolescent to do something they don’t already enjoy you get their attention quickly and they learn to manage their time in school better and study smarter, not harder. Maintaining a C average requires minimal effort and it sounds to me like this kid needs to work harder and quit having his mother make excuses for him.
misjustice on October 16 at 3:22 p.m.
PARENTS are an integral part of a student’s success/failure. Teachers can only do so much.
When I was in grammar school my parents had a rule, homework first. We came home from classes and immediately had to tackle our homework assignments; then my parents would go over our work. No playing outside, no friends coming over, no telephone, no teevee, no nothing until the homework was done and completed successfully.
And when I progressed to the point that my parents could not help me, for example in doing higher math, they hired a tutor to help me.
PARENTS and STUDENTS need to acknowledge that they, ultimately, are responsible for a student learning; blaming educators and the educational system for an individual’s success is not a valid excuse. It’s merely shifting the blame.
misjustice on October 16 at 3:33 p.m.
What difference will it make to the teachers? The teachers will get paid no matter what the grades are of the kids.
I disagree with misjustice too. Educators & the educational system ARE to blame for an individual’s success. Parents must follow up, but the schools have kids for 6 to 8 hours a day. Not all teachers are that way……..just the majority.
They need to teach them but the teacher will spend more time with the child/ren that learn easily because they don’t have to do as much work. This I have seen over & over again. Even heard a teacher say once, “I have 30 kids in my class & I don’t have the time, nor patience, to deal with the one child that needs the most help.”
Also, kids will not be expelled or asked to leave the school because the schools would not get the funds they want if they don’t have a certain number of students….passing or failing.
misjustice on October 16 at 3:44 p.m.
Oh, Gramma, Just You Again?
Bruce (aka thatoneguy) on October 16 at 4:24 p.m.
Union membership ==> decent pay + job security ==> poor performance.
The logic is inescapable.
Bruce (aka thatoneguy) on October 16 at 4:25 p.m.
^ ^ ^ (I didn’t say it was accurate, just inescapable)
gopin2012 on October 16 at 6:15 p.m.
The global jobs auction needs kids like Tyler; those willing to work for pennies per hour and a bowl of vermin infested rice.
Job creators ueber alles!
gmorton on October 16 at 6:36 p.m.
The_Seer wrote,
“gmorton is so right. It really looks like Tyler and his mother have funds for tuition at a private school, like most people in North Idaho.”
Vouchers, my friend.
gopin2012 on October 16 at 6:46 p.m.
Vouchers, another way of saying privatize; as it should be.
Job creators ueber alles!
gmorton on October 16 at 6:52 p.m.
misjustice wrote,
“PARENTS and STUDENTS need to acknowledge that they, ultimately, are responsible for a student learning … .”
Yes indeed.
” … blaming educators and the educational system for an individual’s success is not a valid excuse. It’s merely shifting the blame.”
Parents and students exercise their responsibilities by choosing an appropriate school (or other educational approach) for their kids, from among a wide range of options – schools with different emphases, different curricula, different educational philosophies, different goals, who focus on kids with different backgrounds, different interests, and different abilities. The one-size-fits-all model with its Deweyesque aims was misguided from the beginning and should be scrapped.
Crusty1 on October 16 at 7:19 p.m.
Spokane will never get rid of Social Promotions as long as funding is ties to Levies! Pass the Levies and to hell with everything else!
Crusty1 on October 16 at 7:20 p.m.
OH, Vouchers won’t help this kid a bit! Private schools can kick them out for not working. Public schools can’t!
AnalyzeThat on October 16 at 8:38 p.m.
“Tyler’s grades started to falter in the fifth grade” - so what happened to him at that age that affected his schooling? Because when someone is doing fine, then starts to change in ways that affect their school or work performance, there is always an underlying reason.
greenlibertarian on October 17 at 12:11 a.m.
Except in the rare case like G-Prep and one or two other secondary schools like (secular) St. Georges, all sporto-jocks get social promotion.
Haven’t you noticed where the emphasis is in public school?
The_Seer on October 17 at 10:56 a.m.
greenlib: Excellent point. I am a strong advocate for removing interscholastic athletics from public schools. We don’t have the money anymore and the phenomena of coddling jocks needs to end. In addition, this would eventually rid schools of coaches in favor of educators.