Social Promotion Will End in 5th Grade, Mayor Says
By ELISSA GOOTMAN, NY TIMES, September 10, 2004

LINK

Proclaiming that the city's new effort to hold back failing third graders has been a success, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday that he would expand the policy to fifth graders.

Mindful of the uproar over his previous announcement, the mayor immediately promised to provide $20 million for special Saturday classes and tutoring sessions to make sure that fifth graders at risk of being held back would get extra help before taking citywide tests.

"Now it's time to take the next step and end social promotion in the fifth grade this year," Mr. Bloomberg said, speaking to a hushed auditorium filled with teachers, principals and parent coordinators. "I believe it will be just as beneficial to our children."

Mr. Bloomberg's announcement in January that he would hold back third graders based on test scores set off one of the stormiest episodes of his mayoralty.

The policy, which many education experts and parents' advocates said would hurt children more than help them, was not approved until the mayor fired two members of an oversight panel who had planned to vote against it. The creation of an appeals process and a costly third-grade summer school program softened some of the criticism.

Whether Mr. Bloomberg will face similarly heated opposition now is unclear. He took pains in his announcement to acknowledge that the plan would require the approval of the oversight panel, even though he controls it by appointing a majority of its members. Two panel members who are not mayoral appointees said they had reservations.

By announcing a fully formed plan before the start of school, however, the mayor avoided some of the criticisms that greeted his third-grade plan, which was announced in the middle of the school year and at first hinged on test scores alone.

Still, opponents of the plan cited research indicating that other grade retention policies had failed. They say some studies show that older children have even more trouble than younger children in overcoming the difficulties of being held back. They also say children who are held back, regardless of their age, are more likely to drop out in later years.

And it is still too early, they said, for the mayor to declare the third-grade plan a success.

"It's impossible to declare victory unless you see what happens to the kids who are retained when they get older and can drop out," said Jay P. Heubert, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University who helped prepare a National Research Council report on the issue.

"It's plausible that holding kids back would be good. But the evidence is overwhelming that it's very harmful - that the kids who are held back even if you spend a lot of money on them and give them a lot of different services are less successful academically, and in terms of the likelihood of dropping out, and in terms of self-esteem, than similar low-achieving kids who are promoted."

At first, education officials estimated that up to 15,000 third-graders could be held back this year, up from 4,817 last year. But yesterday, the Department of Education said that only 3,619 children would be held back under the policy this year, a figure that does not include special education students and many English language learners, who are not affected by it.

Last year, 3,105 general education students repeated the third grade.

The mayor said the relatively low number of children repeating third grade did not tell the full story, adding, "The difference is that this year all the youngsters entering fourth grade have the skills they need."

In choosing to focus on the fifth grade, the new plan seemed to fit into a larger effort to improve the city's middle schools, considered nationwide to have a difficult age group to educate.

In the 2002-3 school year, only 2,073 out of 81,663 fifth graders were held back, Jerry Russo, press secretary to Chancellor Joel I. Klein, said, even though 13,510 scored below the cut off point the city will be holding them to next year.

Under the mayor's plan, children who score in the lowest of four categories on their citywide math or English tests could be held back, although an appeals process looks at other factors.

In addition to dealing with raging hormones and other distractions of adolescence, middle school is generally where children move from learning with one main teacher to moving from class to class, a situation that can make it easier for children who have fallen behind to slip through the cracks.

"Middle grades present a tremendous test for even the best prepared and most highly motivated students," the mayor said, speaking at Brooklyn Technical High School days before the start of school on Monday.

"Imagine the challenges for underprepared students. And if they get off course in middle school, what are the odds that they can be rescued in high school? History shows, they become lost and they stay lost."

While no one disputed that the middle school years could be trying, some public officials said the mayor's plan would do little to the address the problems.

Eva S. Moskowitz, chairwoman of the City Council's Education Committee, said the extra $20 million the mayor proposed spending on fifth graders would have been better spent on getting younger children on the right track.

And Jill S. Levy, president of the city principals' union, said she was concerned about the stress placed on children who faced being left back in both the third and fifth grades.

Randi Weingarten, president of the teachers' union, who is in contract talks with the city, had mostly kind words for the new policy, saying, "It seems like the mayor and the chancellor have learned from their mistakes in the way in which the third-grade antisocial promotion policy was announced and implemented last year."

It remains to be seen how contentious a struggle Mr. Bloomberg faces. Critics are still nursing memories of the springtime Panel for Educational Policy meeting at which angry parents shouted down the chancellor for hours, to no avail. But there were also indications that the plan increased the mayor's popularity, lending him a tough-guy persona. Some surveys have shown the idea is popular with New Yorkers, if not with researchers.

"The idea that we can be embroiled in another screaming match between parents and the department is worrisome," said Martine G. Guerrier, the Brooklyn borough president's appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy.

"I think we lost a lot in credibility the last go around because there was no substantive dialogue about student outcomes and instruction. I think that this time that needs to be the focus."

In his speech, the mayor said critics' concerns had proved unfounded.

"School reform is a high-stakes enterprise," he said. "There will always be criticism. There will always be missteps and things we would have done differently given a second chance. That can't shake our confidence or determination to do what we know is right."