July 18, 2005
Bloomberg to Extend Social Promotion Ban, Citing Results
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, NY TIMES

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Boasting that his threat to hold back failing third and fifth graders had spurred record increases in reading and mathematics scores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said today that he would extend the policy to seventh graders.

The move is part of what the mayor called an intense new focus on middle schools, which have long been viewed as a Bermuda Triangle of American education.

Mr. Bloomberg first vowed to tackle the problems of junior high school - and pledged $40 million for the effort - in May, after disappointing results on the state's eighth-grade reading test. The number of city eighth graders scoring proficiently fell by 2.8 percentage points, meaning that fewer than a third of eighth graders were reading at or above grade level.

"We're taking this step because the reality is that seventh grade represents our last, best chance to prepare students for the demands of high school level work," Mr. Bloomberg said. "And it's our duty to grasp that opportunity."

But the threat of holding back failing seventh graders has serious implications that are not seen in the younger grades. Some studies have shown that while older students may be motivated to try harder to avoid being left behind, those who are left behind are at high risk of dropping out of school.

Moreover, keeping seventh graders back raises the eventual possibility of 15-year-olds in the same hallways, cafeterias and locker rooms as prepubescent 11- and 12-year-olds.

So far, however, Mr. Bloomberg's policies to end social promotion in the lower grades have resulted in fewer children being held back, not more. That is because of the intense remedial efforts, including Saturday classes and a summer school program, being offered to students likely to be held back because of low test scores. There is also an appeals process that has allowed thousands of students with poor test scores to be promoted based on a review of their class work and their teacher's opinion.

The mayor said a similar program would be offered to seventh graders starting in September.

In turning his focus to junior high school, Mr. Bloomberg, who has cast himself as the "education mayor," is moving quickly to address the one dark cloud in this year's test results. The eighth-grade scores defied an upward trend in all other grades. Fifth graders, who were subject to the mayor's promotion rules for the first time this year, posted big gains. And Mr. Bloomberg boasted loudly about those results in announcing the widening of the promotion policy, which began with third graders in the 2003-04 school year.

"Because we set that standard and held ourselves to it, record numbers of fifth graders who graduated in June are now prepared to do sixth-grade work in your schools this September," Mr. Bloomberg told a hushed audience of middle school principals who had gathered for a training symposium at Columbia University this morning.

But in taking on middle schools, Mr. Bloomberg is wading into swampy terrain. Schools across New York State and throughout the country, including those in relatively wealthy districts with none of the problems that plague large urban systems, have long struggled with a breakdown of academic performance in the middle grades - a time when puberty and social pressures pose tremendous obstacles to instruction.

Because of the historic failure at the junior high school level, districts including New York City have undertaken a number of initiatives, among them a push to recreate old-style kindergarten-through-8th-grade grammar schools and an effort to experiment with new-style secondary schools serving the 6th to 12th grades.

The expansion of the mayor's promotion rules into middle school had been widely expected and was unlikely to generate much political opposition, let alone the thunderstorm of controversy that followed Mr. Bloomberg's announcement of tougher promotion rules for third graders in January 2004.

At that time, members of the city's Panel for Educational Policy, the successor to the Board of Education, had threatened to veto the mayor's plan. And Mr. Bloomberg succeeded in winning approval only after firing two of his appointees to the panel and arranging the dismissal of a third by the Staten Island borough president.

The opposition was mostly based on decades of research showing that it caused more harm than good to require students to repeat a grade, because it had little if any impact on academic achievement and substantially raised the likelihood that a child would drop out without earning a diploma.

But these days, some education experts question whether Mr. Bloomberg has truly imposed a "promotional gate" to hold back failing pupils or offered up an array of expensive remedial programs that may not be sustainable over the long-term.

"Everyone across the country understands 'End social promotion,' " said Martine Guerrier, the Brooklyn representative on the Panel for Education Policy and a fierce critic of the mayor's promotion plan in its earliest days. "But 'Fund intervention and remediation' - that's not a sexy policy initiative."

For the first 20 minutes of his talk, Mr. Bloomberg, a Republican who is running for re-election, trumpeted his efforts to fix the city schools.

And at least one line, on the need to further increase the city's high school graduation rate, seemed intended to answer criticism from Fernando Ferrer, one of the mayor's Democratic rivals, who last week said Mr. Bloomberg had not done enough to raise the high school completion rates.

The principals, some of whom said they were shocked by the mayor's unexpected appearance at the symposium, did not interrupt him even once with applause during the nearly 40-minute speech, though they clapped politely when he finished.

There were times when the only person in the audience nodding vigorously in assent was Carmen Farina, the deputy chancellor for teaching and learning.

It was a stark contrast to speeches on education issues that Mr. Bloomberg has given to audiences from the corporate and philanthropic worlds, which at times seem to resemble a big-tent revival with huge applause and standing ovations.

School administrators like William Hewlitt, who in September will begin his fourth year as principal of Middle School 203, were more muted but not necessarily unsupportive. "There were few moments when I was ready to applaud," he said after the mayor's speech. "I just didn't feel the obligation to get it started."

"We're all concerned about social promotion," Mr. Hewlitt continued. "I share his thoughts about sending students to the high school level who are not succeeding. Now it's time to put our feet to the fire."