By all accounts, the Panel for Education Policy meeting at the High School for Art and Design on March 15, 2004, changed the way New York taxpayers viewed the Mayor and his 'control' over the Department of Education. It is total. And, as New Yorkers cannot impeach or recall any elected official, Mike Bloomberg, the current Mayor, is here to stay at least until the election of 2005. The Chancellor, according to Mike, will stay for six years with him.

The meeting papers were handed out, but many had never seen any of the suggestions in the policy before the meeting, which for the Department of Education is nothing new. Government was, and is, in New York City, a secret. But we learned that Mike Bloomberg does not like to lose.

A few hours before the meeting began, three members of the Panel were contacted and told that they were fired, as they did not support the Mayor's 3rd grade hold-back policy.

Eva Moskowitz, the Chair of New York City Council's Education Committee, expressed her outrage at the meeting for the omission of due process in the firing of three members of the PEP merely hours before the meeting. she wrote, in the Gotham Gazette, an alternative policy.

and what about the 3rd grade retention policy itself? Almost everyone is against social promotion. But rention brings with it its' own problems, namely possible loss of self esteem, diverse classrooms without teachers adequately trained to handle such diveristy, and class sizes much too big for the classroom. We are, if this policy is used for a large group, punishing the victims:



EDITORIAL OBSERVER
Schools Fail Children, Not the Other Way Around
By BRENT STAPLES

Published: April 6, 2004


The nation's largest school system was thrown into a panic recently when the mayor of New York decreed that third graders who performed poorly on a city test just weeks away could be required to repeat the grade. Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually fired education officials who disagreed with the new policy, despite data from several cities - including Chicago, Miami, Boston, Washington and New York itself - showing that children held back in the early grades fare worse academically - and are more likely to drop out - than children with similar test scores who get extra help after being promoted.

This country has long since learned the hard way that grade retention should be used sparingly - and only as a last resort in third grade or thereafter. Children who are held back without being given the intensive instruction they need to succeed often end up repeating the grade more than once.

Why did Mayor Bloomberg adopt this policy? His critics believe he is trying to manipulate next year's much-publicized fourth grade test scores - and improve his chances at re-election - by making sure that only the best students reach fourth grade.

Mr. Bloomberg, who clearly wants to jolt what he sees as a complacent system, had a different explanation. He suggested that holding back third graders - and making them take classes after school or on weekends - would teach them the value of working hard.

But the notion that young children fail academically because they are lazy passed out of fashion with platform shoes. In recent years, even Congress has grasped the idea that all but a few children can learn successfully if schools provide them with sound instruction. That concept is the cornerstone of the No Child Left Behind education act, which requires school districts to dramatically improve the quality of instruction for all children.

The bulk of the children who would be most directly affected by the Bloomberg plan are trapped in the worst-performing schools - about 40 elementary schools where one in five students performs at the lowest levels on the reading test. These children would gain nothing by being stuck in third grade in a dismal school for an additional dismal year. The administration proposes to tinker at the margins of these failing schools - with tutoring and after-school programs for the students who are held back. That's certainly better than nothing.

What these schools need, however, is an academic Marshall Plan. This means bringing in new principals, teachers, a proven new curriculum and smaller classes in the early grades.

The city had such a program, but abandoned it after Mr. Bloomberg gained control of the school system. The now-disbanded Chancellor's District, started in the mid-1990's by Chancellor Rudy Crew, grew out of a state law that gave districts the power to reshape and even close down schools that languished on the state failing list.

Mr. Crew took control of 58 elementary and middle schools. He brought in new teachers and principals and installed smaller classes, a longer school day and a rigid, high-quality curriculum - all of it driven by an infusion of money. The heart of the elementary school instructional system was an intensive reading program that lasted three hours a day - nearly twice the time available in other city schools.

Reading scores in the Chancellor's District schools were going up when the city gave up on the program last year. The city then put in place a less focused reading curriculum that the federal government later declared ineligible for federal reading grants under No Child Left Behind. Children's advocates were angry to see the Chancellor's District go but held their tongues to give the new mayor the benefit of the doubt. They worried that the city would abandon intensive whole-school reform - which depends on strong instruction and small classes in the early grades - to focus on test preparation.

This test fixation began to creep in before Mr. Bloomberg took office. But a February report by Educational Priorities Panel, a nonpartisan umbrella group representing 28 civic organizations, suggests that the trend has begun to accelerate at an alarming pace. The E.P.P. monitors have reported seeing larger classes in the first through third grades, but smaller ones in fourth grade, when students take state tests - the much-publicized results of which are taken as a barometer of whether a school system is succeeding.

The report concluded that the schools had secretly begun to focus most of their limited resources on the testing years and were "not investing enough resources in preventing students from falling behind before they get to these grades." This practice, the report said, does not improve student performance and is roughly akin to "watering crops only a month before harvest."

Mr. Bloomberg seemed to shift part of the blame for the school system's failure onto the city's 8-year-olds when he created this grade retention program. What the mayor needs to recognize, however, is that the schools are failing the children - and not the other way around. In this context, the new city program amounts to little more than blaming the victims.

Also, there is little evidence that retention is successful at getting the kids held back to learn:

In 3rd grade, read or repeat
Georgia's policy is set, but the debate about whether retention is in kids' best interest is far from settled.Patti Ghezzi, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, April 18, 2004

Georgia is jumping on a national trend by requiring third-graders to pass the state's reading test before being promoted to fourth grade.

Florida. New York. Chicago. Across the country, the notion of automatically sending kids to the next grade is out of favor with politicians and top school leaders.

But studies provide little evidence that making kids repeat a grade helps them catch up over the long term.

"Unequivocally, retaining students does not help them academically," said Donald Moore, executive director of Chicago-based Designs for Change, which opposes the Chicago school district's 7-year-old retention policy. "Promote them, but give them extra help."

People who support holding kids back agree those children need intense instruction. But they say it makes no sense to promote children until they get that help and have a reasonable chance of succeeding in the next grade.

Opponents of retention --- including the National Association of School Psychologists --- say children suffer from the stigma of having to repeat a grade.

Several studies conclude that kids who are held back have a greater chance of dropping out, but proponents say there are too many other factors involved to directly link dropping out to repeating a grade. The Georgia Legislature and former Gov. Roy Barnes decided in 2001 that schools should stop passing ill-prepared kids on to the next grade, often referred to as social promotion. Georgia, like many cities and states, decided to target third-graders first, because the amount of reading increases sharply in fourth grade and keeps rising every year through high school.

Next year, for the first time, Georgia's fifth-graders will have to pass reading and math tests to be promoted. The following year, eighth-graders will have to pass to move on to high school.

The state estimates about 10 percent of Georgia's 100,000 third-graders will fail during this spring's testing season.

Schools will offer free summer school for kids who don't pass, as well as a chance to take the test again.

Some kids still won't pass, and it's unclear what will happen to them. Most likely they will be put in a "transition class" in the fall rather than a regular third-grade class. District officials say they are waiting for direction from the state on exactly how to handle their retained students. Parents will be able to appeal, but those details also have yet to be worked out.

Some parents are worried about how much flexibility schools will have in deciding whether a child who fails the test can still be promoted.

Greg Hewitt says his third-grade daughter Stefanie may not pass the reading test even though she gets A's and B's on her report cards. Stefanie reads slowly and methodically and does not do well on standardized tests, though she does not have any learning disabilities, her father said. Her results on pretests suggest she may not pass when she is tested this week.

The family has spent more than $3,000 on tutoring and sent Stefanie for private help with test-taking strategies during spring break. Her parents read with her for 20 minutes every night and give her additional study materials used by families who school their children at home.

"She's feeling a great deal of anxiety just thinking about this test," Hewitt said, and she desperately does not want to be held back.

Hewitt and his wife have talked with school administrators seeking details about the appeals process should Stefanie fail. "The school can't tell us what they're going to do," he said. "They can't understand the legislation any better than we do."

'The dummy room'

The prospect of putting retained kids in a separate "transitional" class is unsettling to Moore, of the Chicago organization. "Putting a group of low-achieving students together is a harmful policy," he said. Such classes become known among students as "the dummy room," he said.

Researchers at the University of Chicago concluded recently that the city's much-watched policy of holding back third-, sixth- and eighth-graders who don't score high enough on math and reading tests is not helping. Although retained third-graders did a bit better the next year, two years later they were no better off than academically weak students who were allowed to advance to fourth grade, the study found.

Chicago school officials called the study's conclusion flawed and insisted that the program --- which includes summer school and other efforts to help struggling students --- is successful. Overall, test scores are up and dropout rates are down, they note.

Another study of the Chicago program, by Harvard University researcher Brian Jacob, concluded that retention helps third-graders, but not sixth-graders. The study found that retained third-graders improved in math over two years, but not in reading.

"Like most difficult, real-world issues, there is not one simple, easy answer," Jacob said.

The Chicago school board recently dropped the requirement that kids pass the math test to be promoted and said students could not be retained more than once.

New York has instituted a policy requiring third-graders to pass math and reading tests to earn promotion.

Officials said New York would do a better job than Chicago of helping kids in early grades before they reach third grade.

Policies in place

At least three metro Atlanta school districts --- Marietta, Atlanta and Gwinnett --- already have policies that attempt to end social promotion. All three provide some sort of transitional classes for kids who have been held back.

Marietta hasn't been able to fully implement its policy --- which affects students in kindergarten through high school --- because of problems with the state curriculum test. And funding shortfalls have jeopardized plans for "bridges" classes for retained students, said Emily Lembeck, associate superintendent.

Atlanta officials say their program, which started in 1999 and requires third-graders to pass the language arts portion of the curriculum test as well as reading, has succeeded.

Of 169 third-graders retained last year, 69 percent were promoted to fourth grade and 17 percent made enough progress to move to fifth grade. The rest left the system, in many cases because their family moved, said Kathy Augustine, a deputy superintendent.

"If children do not read well, can't calculate well . . . they will not succeed," she said.

"We are trying to prevent them from dropping out."



UPDATE:
A few days before the test was given to the 3rd graders, we learned that parents og 3rd graders were given the option of quickly applying for "special education" designation for their child, designed to give extended time on the test.

Then at the monday evening Panel For educational Policy meeting (the day before the test), parents representing the opposition, "Time Out From Testing" showed the test on television. The City and Mayor Bloomberg is threatening to sue. The makeup exam date has been postponed until a new test can be written.