Why Johnny Can’T Move Up District 81 Sets Standards To Crack Down On Social Promotion For Failing Students

In a move to end social promotion, Spokane School District 81 has implemented standards to make sure kids aren’t passed to the next grade if they lag behind in skills.

But district officials stress the policy is centered on early intervention, and flunking students will be the last resort after efforts have been made to help them catch up.

Social promotion - the practice of moving kids up a grade level to keep them with their peers - was voted out by the District 81 School Board in 1997. The district has spent the last three years preparing teachers, students and parents - as well as its curriculum - for the change.

Despite evidence showing that holding kids back lowers academic achievement and increases dropout rates, district officials believe their new policy will help kids.

“We will do everything we can to bring them up to grade level, but if they aren’t ready, then there shouldn’t be social promotion,” said District 81 Superintendent Gary Livingston.

Since the school board approved its “qualifying foundations” policy, administrators and teachers have worked together to define basic grade-level standards in reading and math - considered to be the core subjects that help predict student success.

They also have developed an assessment test to measure competency in math and reading and have expanded the district’s intervention programs, which include homework centers, tutoring programs and summer school.

The policy applies to third-graders this year, with the sixth and eighth grades to be added in the next two years. The sixth-grade assessment is being piloted this year, and the eighth-grade pilot project is expected to come on line next year.

Third-graders took the new multiple-choice test in September, three weeks after school had started. About a quarter of them - roughly 625 of the district’s 2,500 third-graders - didn’t pass either the reading or math sections or both, according to Joe Kinney, District 81’s assessment director.

Letters were sent to parents of those students last month, informing them of the results and inviting them to a parent-teacher conference to discuss a plan to help their children improve.

All third-graders will take a second screening test in January.

“We will do another screening, and we expect the numbers to drop quite a bit,” Kinney said.

Kids who still are behind will continue to get extra help through the end of the school year.

Any decision to hold back a student will involve parents, Livingston said.

So far, parents don’t seem to be alarmed by the new policy, said Kay Pruett, a third-grade teacher at Spokane’s Grant Elementary School. But that could change come January, she said.

“I have had very little reaction one way or another from parents,” said Pruett, referring to her recent conferences with parents of children who didn’t pass the screening test. “This second go-around in January, we may see more parents questioning it.”

The district’s decision to end social promotion was in response, in part, to public input.

“When we had our focus groups and public forums, we heard parents loud and clear,” Livingston said. “They didn’t want social promotion to be a part of the Spokane Public Schools and they didn’t want kids matriculating through grade levels without the knowledge and skills to be successful.”

The new policy also was influenced by the state’s education reform movement, which has set higher academic standards. Progress toward the state’s tough new learning goals is measured by the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, a rigorous set of tests in math, reading, writing and communication. It is given to students in grades four, seven and 10. The test will become high stakes in 2008, when high schools seniors must have passed the 10th-grade WASL to graduate.

While District 81 has aligned its learning standards with the state’s, the district’s new assessment tool is designed for measuring basic competency in reading and math, not mastery.

“The WASL is the ceiling and this is the floor,” said Fran Mester, District 81’s director of instructional programs. “If a student does well on the qualifying foundation targets, it doesn’t mean a student is ready to pass the WASL. But they are moving in the right direction toward accomplishing that.”

During the past five school years, District 81, on average, has held back about 50 students in grades K-6 each year.

District officials say the intent of the policy is to boost student achievement. While the new policy will likely result in more kids being held back, they can’t predict how many, but hope the numbers remain small.

“I don’t think we are going to see a dramatic number, but I think we are going to see some,” Livingston said.

“The spirit of this policy is to get a very clear picture of the current performance of a student by the classroom teacher so the educational plan can be monitored and adjusted,” Mester said. “We are trying to help parents become active partners in their child’s education program by sharing this information.”

Programs to end social promotion in public schools have become increasingly popular in the past five years, but they remain controversial.

Research has consistently shown that flunking kids actually lowers academic performance and significantly raises dropout rates, according to University of Wisconsin sociologist Robert M. Hauser, who led a 1999 National Academy of Sciences study on retention.

“Kids who are held back don’t catch up,” Hauser said. “The evidence in favor of retention is almost nonexistent.”

He said students do better if they are pushed ahead with remediation, rather than being left behind with remediation.

“Findings also show, even more conclusively, that kids who are held back are much more likely to drop out before completing high school,” he said.

After hearing a description of District 81’s new policy, Hauser said it’s better than most retention policies.

“This is by far, I think, better than a number of plans I’ve heard about,” he said. “There seems to be a serious effort to find out which kids need help well in advance of the high-stakes test, and second, some real remedial effort is going to be made.”

In the event a student is held back, the same instruction will not be repeated, Livingston said.

“Putting them through the same thing that wasn’t successful is insanity,” Livingston said. “You may assign them to a different teacher, assign different resources, you may be able to get them additional tutoring.”