Wednesday, February 28, 2001
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Wednesday, February 28, 2001 |
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Challenges loom as social promotion ends By AMY RILEY The 2001 installment in the ongoing process of education reform in Georgia's public schools is making its way among Georgia legislators, educators and interested parents. The package this year in large part builds on reforms that were put in to place last year. House Bill 1187, enacted in the 2000 Georgia legislative session, placed high stakes on schools and teachers by linking pay bonuses to improved student scores on standardized tests. HB 656 seeks to shift some of the burden for performance back on to students in a bill section called the "Georgia Academic Placement and Promotion Policy." HB 656 calls for an end to an era of "social promotion," a sort of silent "code" among educators and parents which allows students to move along to the next grade level with same age classmates despite their failure to fully master the curriculum objectives of the grade before. Popular opinion for many has been that holding a child back to repeat a grade potentially caused as many problems socially as it attempted to alleviate academically. Modern public education, with its child-centered approach to learning, has attributed many of students' academic deficits in grades kindergarten through second grade to the inherently variable nature of child development, believing that over time, usually by third grade or so, most children will be on a somewhat level playing field academically. It is here then, at third grade, that HB 656 first aims to address that playing field and put to the test the notion that most children will "catch up" developmentally and obtain mastery of reading and other academic areas. The "Georgia Academic Placement and Promotion Policy," if enacted as part of HB 656 by the Georgia legislature, will phase in an end to social promotion at the grade level milestones of third, fifth, and eighth grades. Promotion to the fourth, sixth, and ninth grade will hinge on a student's performance on certain criterion referenced tests. The good news is that along with high stakes testing comes an increased emphasis on providing early intervention and remediation for children who are lagging behind academically. Students will be allowed to get extra help, then attempt to pass the criterion referenced test again. If the student still shows a lack of mastery of the skills necessary to progress to the next grade level, parents, the student, the child's teacher(s), and a school administrative designee will confer to determine whether retention is the best course of action. There will also likely be an appeal process, if any member of the child's "team" is unsatisfied with the recommended grade placement. The notion of high stakes testing raises the blood pressure of nearly every stakeholder in public education. Teachers resent the impetus to "teach to the test," and view the whole process as intrusive and disruptive to the educational process. Learning for the sake of learning gives way to learning to score well on the test. Parents, though interested to know how well their child is doing in school and how well their child's school is doing, wonder if high stakes testing isn't putting too much pressure on their children. Administrators have to address the logistics of testing as well as assuage the anxieties of the teachers, students and parents. There are some great lessons to be learned in this move to end social promotion. One is that much of the stigma associated with repeating a grade will have to be rethought, partly because retention will be more common than probably any of us have ever experienced, and because stigmatizing those whose pace of learning is slower than others is cruel. The second lesson is that the people who probably will have to "change" their thinking the most is not teachers or students, but parents. In this county, some of the staunchest sources of "pressure to perform" are parents. Thirdly, we need not assume that high stakes testing necessarily means high academic standards. There has been quite a bit of critical commentary over the course of the standards-based education reform movement on the low level of standards. One of the first things that happens after a state implements high stakes testing is that they come right back and lower the bar for what constitutes a "passing" grade. Why? Economics and logistics. When states like Texas and Massachusetts faced the sheer volume of students recommended for grade retention, they simply couldn't provide remediation and intervention services on that grand of a scale, so they renormed the tests. The most important lesson is the realization that we do no favors for children by passing them along to the next grade if they haven't mastered the objectives of the previous grade. But repeating a grade has a human face. Children aren't statistics. They're probably not as fragile as we adults like to assume, but they are impressionable, sensitive and unsure little people. How we as adults deal with the end to social promotion will have everything to do with how they deal with it.
Education First Watch: Clayton Carmack has requested a rezoning from A-R to R-72 for 40.55 acres to develop an 18-lot single-family residential subdivision. The rezoning, if passed, will add an additional 28 students to the Spring Hill, Whitewater, Fayette High cluster. To comment, call the Fayette County Zoning Department at 770-460-5730. [Your comments are welcome at ARileyFreePress@aol.com.]
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