Strong Challenge That Must Be Met

What happens to the child who passes through grade after grade without learning to read? What does a high school teacher do with a freshman who can’t decipher the science text?

These are the real-life questions Spokane educators must examine as they struggle to write a school retention policy that works.

Years ago, District 81 relied on retentions and pre-first grade classrooms to hold back kids who weren’t ready for the next level. But as the self-esteem movement took over, the number of retentions declined, from 233 in 1986 to 22 last year. Kids didn’t benefit from being held back, teachers concluded. They simply turned into hulking sixth graders who shaved - and still couldn’t read.

This is not a simple problem. The United States is one of the few countries in the world that actually tries to educate everyone. This grand principle underlies both our democracy’s greatest strengths and our public schools’ greatest weaknesses.

Not every child has the capacity to learn to read at age 6. Some will require special education classes. Others simply linger in earlier developmental stages longer. Still other kids live in such emotional chaos that the orderly world of their neighborhood school might as well be the moon.

We demand a great deal of today’s teachers, who struggle to meet the emotional and intellectual needs of a more troubled group of American children than ever, in classes often too crowded to be effective.

But the problems aren’t insurmountable. Educators know what works. In special programs, such as Apple or Montessori, locally, children flourish when their individual developmental levels are accommodated. In a recent study at Lewis and Clark High School, average reading scores were above the students’ grade level, but volunteer tutors have been drafted to coach a worrisome number of low-level readers. Across the country, innovative schools have worked miracles in the most desolate neighborhoods.

Puzzles posed by the schools’ retention policy won’t be solved by simple, one-size-fits-all answers. Neither will they be solved by maintaining the status quo, by ignoring the problem or denying its ramifications.

But good answers do exist. They require hard work, creativity and often money. They may include multi-age classrooms that group first-, second- and third-graders with one teacher for three years. They may be smaller classes or more teacher’s aides. They may be innovative after-school or summer school programs. They may even be good, old-fashioned retention, which features an undeniable logic: Why would you pass on to third grade if you haven’t learned second grade material yet?

Certainly, solutions must be aimed at the primary years. Whenever possible, kids should be held back in the first grade, not the eighth. Whole language reading programs based on intriguing children with the power of story need to be balanced with solid phonics lessons. Kids’ reading skills shouldn’t be sacrificed in the magical mist of fuzzy-headed educational theories.

We have given the public schools the huge task of educating all of our children. Now, the school board must find the resources and the will to make certain that our schools succeed.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jamie Tobias Neely/For the editorial board