The new 3rd grade retention policy from the NYC Department of Education. This policy has at least one supporter in Washington DC: Secretary of Education Rod Paige.

The new 3rd grade retention policy is very expensive, and begs the question, if classes are at 110% to 150% capacity, where do these children go? Who teaches them, and what do they learn?

In order to bolster the Department of Education's proposal to keep 3rd graders back if they do not pass standardized tests, the DOE says that 81 % of the 3rd-graders who could not achieve level 1 still were failing in 7th grade.

Are these children learning disabled children who never received any services? If so, what is the NYC DOE going to do to change the way special education policy is implemented? The NYC DOE has been very vague about what they plan to do and how they plan to do it.

Will the NYC Department of Education train teachers in the management of diverse classrooms, and teaching differentiated curricula? Or, is the move to retain all 3rd graders who do not do well on the standardized test at the end of the year a political ploy to keep the 4th grade state-wide test scores high?

Veteran Principals are worried that the program will hurt more children than help, all in the best interest of the bureaucracy, not the children.


Testimony of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators

Jill S. Levy, President


New York Education Committee City Council Hearing
On Social Promotion
March 3, 2004

Good afternoon, Madam Chairwoman and Members of the Education Committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to share with you my experiences concerning social promotion. I would like to take you back to the early years of my career and use my past as a way to shine a light on the present danger caused by the latest city proposal.

The biggest concern to keep in mind is that this is not a third grade issue. This is an early childhood issue. We must face the problems when they begin, not when it is too late.

I thought I learned my lessons well in developmental psychology, but apparently I'm wrong. That, at least, is the conclusion I must draw based on the recent decision by corporate America to re-institute a retention policy for third graders in New York City. Although my master's degree is in preschool special education, my wise professors at Hunter College made certain that I mastered normal child development before I studied children with special needs.

Of course, I also had the experience of having taught first grade to students who spoke little English or who had never seen the inside of a nursery or kindergarten class. In order to protect their children from life on the street, most of the parents did not allow their children outside to play. So television, when it was available, was the only primary source of education for these impressionable children.

The Board of Education gave me curriculum guides in every possible subject but it didn't take me long to realize my children, with the possible exception of two children left behind, couldn't succeed at the tasks required of them. They hadn't reached any of the developmental milestones six-year-olds are supposed to have achieved. All were lacking in the basics: Motor skills, receptive and expressive language skills, and social skills.

In addition, I needed to help broaden their life experiences to develop a foundation upon which to build.
To accomplish this, I combined a first-grade curriculum with a kindergarten readiness program until, with one exception, everyone was writing, recognizing words, reading simple sentences, and communicating in English. My two students who had been left back were way ahead at the beginning of the term and through the winter. But to my amazement, in early spring, almost everyone had caught up with them, and some had moved ahead.

So what's the lesson here? I'll tell you: The answer is not to hold children back. The answer is to better prepare our youngest children so they can meet the demands of an elementary school curriculum. To do that, I am calling for universal pre-kindergarten for all children ages 3 and up to provide our youngest school children with the educational, social and physical care they need. If we are going to compare all these children later on in their school years – and hold them back for "failing" – we need to even the learning field. We have to stop punishing the victims for social problems we have not, or cannot, address. We must stop punishing our children because some parents don't speak English, are poor, are uneducated, and, in some cases, are irresponsible. We must stop punishing families who are simply using all their energy to survive.

Today's children are no different than the little ones I taught. Some have developed readiness skills because they attended preschools or day care centers, or they have family who had the time and skill to focus on child rearing. Other less fortunate children were reared by the television.

Some have been read to; others are lucky to have an adult taking care of their basic needs. Some live in a world filled with museums and plays and puppet shows; others learn that curse words are a part of everyday speech.

Some of our children live in the land of plenty. Many of our children are malnourished, children of alcoholics and drug addicts, residents of homeless shelters or overcrowded, decrepit apartments.

Some of our children live in a world where language is an expressive tool; too many of them do not know the simple nursery rhymes or fanciful fairy tales that serve an extraordinary development purpose.

Some of our children have traveled the world, have sailed on oceans, have climbed mountains, and have gazed at the sky across a corn field; others have never been to a beach or to one of the city's great parks.

Yet, each of these little ones is expected to attain academic and social milestones within the same time frame as his or her peers. And if he or she doesn't, well, let's humiliate the child and leave him or her behind.

Of course I want these children to succeed. But leaving them behind is like closing the proverbial barn door. It's too late.

Yet, we offer parents who cannot afford private nursery school few opportunities for their children. Yes, we do have "universal pre-K" for some four-year olds offered through Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's LADDER program. Other children attend our city-funded day care/early childhood centers. But space in those programs is sorely lacking. One conservative estimate says more than 30,000 children are waiting for slots in those programs. How will those children get the developmental skills and experiences so necessary for future academic, intellectual and social success?

Here's what our children need:

We must lobby Albany to begin a complete overhaul of our existing system of day care/early childhood education. The State Education Department (SED) must have oversight over these programs, not the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS).

We must staff our early childhood classes with licensed professionals who thoroughly understand the intellectual, social and physical developmental needs of young children.

We must have licensed supervisors with expertise in early childhood to watch over the delivery of early childhood education as well as to help city and state institutions deliver similar services.

We must pay these professionals appropriately and stop treating them as if they are baby sitters.

We must implement child study teams to identify academically needy youngsters.

We must assess their specific needs and design a plan to address the deficits.

We must teach parenting skills to those who need it most. To that end, we should work with area hospitals and community-based organizations to develop and implement meaningful parenting instruction.

We need to address the issue of longer school days and longer school years for our children. There is much to learn and, for some, too little time in which to learn it all.

As for the third-grade retention policy that Mayor Bloomberg recently implemented, I challenge him to find any research that proves it works. I leave it to the others testifying to pour over the details of the voluminous studies that show the ills of stopping social promotion. Many of those studies, in fact, are based on the "Gates" program implemented right here in the city during the 70's. Now, I don't question a few children may benefit, but the majority will suffer; some will develop life-long scars.

Since research does not support retention, who does benefit from its implementation? Well, the Mayor and the Chancellor will publicize fourth grade scores next year. (What a coincidence – it's an election year!) The non-achievers, left back in third grade, won't bring down the scores of the fourth graders. That will look good for the powers-that-be. And the following year, researchers tell us, we will see a temporary boost in the scores of the holdovers, which will look even better.

But that increase, research says, will eventually fade. And so will the demand for holding kids back. This is a fad, my friends. We've seen it time and time again. And we educators, who are down in the trenches, will continue to shout up at the well-meaning but arrogant policy-makers, "It doesn't work!"

Thank you again for offering me the opportunity to provide you with testimony on this important subject.

MONDAY NIGHT MASSACRE

On monday, March 15, 2004, those assembled at the High School of Art and Design saw Mayoral control over the New York City public school system in all it's glory. A few hours before the Panel on Educational Policy was to vote on Mayor Bloomberg's strict new promotion requirements for 3rd graders, the Mayor and Staten Island Borough President fired and replaced three members who were going to vote no: Susana Torruella Leval, Ramona Hernandez, and Joan McKeever-Thomas. The three new members of the Panel (Tino Hernandez, Alan Aviles, and Joan Correale) were rushed to Tweed Courthouse, sworn in, and rushed to the meeting in time to vote for the new policy, 8 to 5 in favor. One of the other Mayoral appointees, David C. Chang, appeared on a very bad video screen from Tokyo and voted in favor. At the door to the school police threatened to arrest anyone entering the building with a sign, even if made out of paper.

"This is what Mayoral control is all about," said Mr. Bloomberg "In the olden days, we had a board that was answerable to nobody...Mayoral control means mayoral control, thank you very much. They are my representatives, and they are going to vote for things that I believe in." ["Bloomberg Wins on School Tests After Firing Foes", by David Herszenhorn, NY Times, March 16, 2004].

The new policy retains in 3rd grade any student who scores Level 1 on the April citywide English and Math tests, unless a Level 2 score is reached after summer school or a teacher files a successful appeal. City officials estimate that there may be as many as 15,000 3rd graders retained this year.

The parents, elected officials and union leaders in the audience were outraged, especially since Chancellor Joel Klein tried to falsify the firings by saying the three members had resigned. He was shouted down.

The example of Chicago used by the Mayor and Chancellor to show how "successful" 3rd grade retention is, may be false. Thus the NYC DOE forced a policy onto our children that they knowingly mis-represented.

And this will cost New York City taxpayers $51 million. Now we know who is truly benefitting from this plan?