In plan, students progress at own pace
By Anand Vaishnav, Globe Staff | June 27, 2004

The Boston Public Schools system plans to give high schools the option of scrapping the ninth-through-12th-grade structure and letting students take classes at their own speed, a radical redesign of an American institution.

The idea, a part of a slew of high school overhauls the Boston School Committee could approve as early as July 14, would replace a six-year get-tough policy requiring failing high school students to repeat a grade.

Freshmen currently repeat the year if they fail English or math, or two of the following: science, history, or languages. But by this fall, students who fail a few classes in ninth grade would not return as freshmen the next school year.

Instead, they would retake the classes they failed and move on to the next level in the courses they passed. Advanced students could graduate within three years, and struggling students could take up to five years to finish or make up the course in summer school.

Like Chicago and Houston, Boston is rethinking its practice of using strict standards that force thousands to repeat a grade, but it is proposing a larger-scale and more flexible approach than most school systems, education researchers say. High schools nationwide are experimenting by breaking up into smaller units or developing career focuses -- all to reverse falling graduation rates and help students who cannot keep up with rising standards and exit exams. Boston's idea has drawn both support and skepticism, with critics saying high schools and their students need the structure of grade levels.

Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant said that holding students back largely has not helped the city's 29 high schools, which still have too many students repeating a grade, needing summer school, or dropping out. In 2002, nearly one of three Boston students quit high school over four years, up from one of four students in 1999. Low-achieving ninth-graders are assigned to summer school, but hundreds skip it. About 4 percent of the students in the district's ninth- and 10th-grade classes are 19 or 20 years old who were held back.

Retention will remain in Boston's elementary and middle schools, where Payzant said it has largely worked because the city gives students more attention in the classes they failed as well as two sessions of summer school. But repeating the same grade is not helping struggling older students, he said. One of every five freshmen is held back.

"Hopefully by trying this. . .over time it will take hold and be much more of a motivator for students than what we often see now, where if students are already behind, they have to repeat," Payzant said. "The track record is not great."

Nationally, because of the continued practice of holding students back, educators are growing more worried about the number of students who drop out after ninth grade. A Boston College study released earlier this year found that 12 percent of freshmen did not make it to their sophomore year in 1999, triple the rate of 4 percent in the early 1970s.

In 2003, more than 2,700 Boston freshmen, or 44 percent of the class, had to take summer school because they failed one or more core courses, records show. In some cases, schools promoted students who came close, but did not pass summer classes. Schools also promoted students who were too old for their grade or had been held back more than once.

Boston School Committee members have largely endorsed the plan to improve high schools, but have questions. Chairwoman Elizabeth Reilinger said she wants proof that the widely varying paths at each high school will be equally rigorous.

Moreover, she said, practical worries remain: When is the junior prom in a high school with no grades? How will colleges interpret transcripts?

"We've got to think about what this means because it's a very different way of organizing it," she said.

The committee asked Payzant to return to its next meeting with a more detailed report. Reilinger said the panel could approve the plan in July, or, if questions remain, at its Sept. 15 meeting.

Eliminating grades can bring pitfalls, including putting students in a less-structured environment that some cannot handle. Nothing in the plan explicitly addresses that -- or how schools should help students who fail repeatedly. Payzant said he wants schools to try different teaching techniques, rather than repeating the same material. He said the ungraded structure can work as the city breaks its large high schools into smaller ones, a cornerstone of his plan for high schools.

Under the plan, schools could choose one of three options: The first two are more traditional routes, outlining specific courses students must take. A third allows schools to choose their own course sequences, with school department approval, including going ungraded or keeping the more traditional format.

Doug Sears, the dean of the School of Education at Boston University, supports holding students back if they need to be. But he likes Payzant's plan because it lets students advance while repeating courses they cannot handle and urged the School Committee to make sure the ungraded structure does not let students slide. "They have to make sure that they are holding people accountable to real standards," Sears said.

If the policy existed now, high school might have been smoother for Karl Campbell, an 18-year-old Hyde Park High School junior. Campbell failed two courses his freshman year but had to retake all six. He stayed in school because of the encouragement of his teachers and parents, but did not see the wisdom in repeating the courses he had passed.

"The classes I passed, I shouldn't have had to take over. It was a waste of time," he said.

The plan's designers do not know how many high schools will switch to the ungraded design. But Donald Pellegrini, headmaster of West Roxbury High School for 28 years, is among the skeptics. He said students already can finish high school in three years, and high schools need a fixed format for student success and administrative ease.

"How you set up courses and assign courses needs to have some kind of structure," Pellegrini said.

But other administrators say they've seen the merit of eliminating grades. At least three of the city's pilot schools, which operate free of many district guidelines, already use the approach Payzant supports.

At the Boston Community Leadership Academy, a 400-student pilot school in Bay Village, the academy puts students in the "lower house" or "upper house" and doesn't give them a label. Students do not wait until the year ends to advance to another course; a student could graduate in three years. Twelve progressed so quickly that by their final year, they took courses at the Harvard Extension School and the University of Massachusetts at Boston under a dual-enrollment program, headmaster Nicole N. Bahnam said.

With the ungraded system, Bahnam said, students move based on the skills they have mastered, whether it takes a few months or more than a year.

Going ungraded, though, did not necessarily make things easier. Students at the pilot school have more requirements than their traditional high school counterparts. They have to write, present, and defend a 15-page research paper before an independent panel. This year, 12 "upper house" students who did not do a good job did not graduate. They'll have to take summer school and try again, Bahnam said.

Elsewhere in the nation, the Rochester, N.Y., city school system let students take five years to graduate, and Houston school board members voted in April to give students until the end of high school to pass all core classes, instead of failing them yearly if they do not pass. In March, facing mixed research about its strict promotion rules, Chicago eased rules for holding third-, sixth-, and eighth-graders back.

Education specialists point to one place where the ungraded system seems to work: the Chugach School District in south central Alaska, a school system of just 215 students.

Ten years ago, with nearly all students reading below grade level, the school system abolished all grades. The system initially faced opposition, but has since won parents over, assistant superintendent Bob Crumley said. Now, 80 percent read at grade level.

Anand Vaishnav can be reached at vaishnav@globe.com.



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