Testimony
of
Randi Weingarten, President,
United Federation of Teachers
Delivered By
Michelle Bodden, Vice President for Elementary Schools
Before the
City Council Education Committee
Hearing on Social Promotion
March 3, 2004
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The question of whether or not to recommend promotion for a child who is not doing well in school is one of the most troubling any teacher faces. Putting aside such philosophical concerns as academic standards and the value of high-stakes testing, most teachers think first about what's best for the child - what's best for his/her long-term academic success and also what's best for his/her healthy emotional development.
Sadly, since the mayor's pronouncement ending social promotion for third graders, the debate has swirled around what the "gate' should be. (I say it was a pronouncement because educational policy is not debated any more in this city by a policy board, it is just pronounced by the mayor and chancellor. Then, if people disagree, they take it to the streets.) Even though we agree with the mayor that social promotion should be ended, teachers must have a role in deciding whether a student should be retained. That decision cannot be based solely on a one-day, high-stakes test.
Social promotion is one of those issues that is far easier to criticize than to correct, at least if you truly care about kids more than you care about ideology.
Research and common sense tell us that simply promoting to the next grade children who haven't mastered the basics without giving them any extra support never does any good. It also tells us that holding them back under the same conditions is equally as unlikely to improve academic achievement. Furthermore, both approaches are injurious to children, socially, emotionally and yes, even academically, since both failing students and holdovers often eventually become drop-outs.
All of this is so well known among educators that that it seems unimaginable that Tweed has not come to grips with the tough choices before now. Obviously, at this 11 th hour, any attempts at remediation for this school year are going to be no more than band-aids. No matter how many hours of test prep are added to failing third-graders' study schedules in the next six weeks (and after all, how many hours of study in a day can an 8-year-old sustain?), they can't make up for the extra supports that should have been provided all year long.
The opportunity was there. In June 2002 when we first added two 50-minute blocks of time to the school week in our last UFT/DOE contract, both Chancellor Levy and we envisioned one of those blocks would be used as it was in our highly successful pilot program of Extended Time Schools - for tutoring and small group instruction for kids who needed it most. And last year, when the administration asked to convert that to equal time every day (which we did in a supplemental contract negotiation which they later reneged upon), 15 or 20 minutes daily was used for added classroom instruction, and the results were positive.
And while we can't right the missed opportunities of the past, it is important to realize that limited add-ons are not the way to help kids who are floundering to catch up. With 30,000 students in that category, clearly much more fundamental changes must be made to the system's overall early childhood instructional program; it must be overhauled to ensure that all children, including those with the greatest needs, get the academic and support services to which they are entitled from day one, even as early as pre-kindergarten.
In addition, many children need tailored instructional approaches, not one-size-fits-all. While balanced literacy, done right, clearly has its place for students who have acquired basic language skills, other children need a more structured program. Some NYC districts have been very successful, for example, with Reading Recovery, which has a strong diagnostic component, and helps every first grader acquire the basic skills he or she needs to become a proficient reader. Something like that is what's needed in every school to ensure that no child leaves the first grade without a foundation of early literacy skills.
Reading Recovery is not the only program that helps in this regard; Open Court is another. And there are others. However, Tweed 's ideology seems to prevent us from looking to reading programs that actually work for kids.
So, instead of belaboring the value of planned catch-up measures for the spring or what the retention gate should be, I want to focus on how to do it best for September so we can guarantee that services get to kids who need them.
As I said at the outset, educators are between a rock and a hard place when developing promotional polices. Neither social promotion nor retention is without its drawbacks, and the same is true of separate holdover classes vs. classes of students with widely mixed abilities, including holdovers.
The Gates policy of the ‘80s ultimately failed for a variety of reasons, but it did help thousands of students by providing them with a rich learning environment. In comparison, attempts to target extra services at children who are far behind while they remain in regular classes - whether they've been retained or not - have been hit or miss, often depending on the commitment and leadership of the district or school. Too many kids are never connected to the services and interventions they need. That's why there are now more than 30,000 third graders at risk.
I am going to make some suggestions that we at the UFT think avoid the worst pitfalls of the "all-or-nothing" consequences of either a strict retention policy or a liberal promotion policy. It gives students not a few months a year, or a few hours a week - which appears to be Tweed's plan - but a full year of full - time enriched academic and support services.
These services will be provided in what I'll call (for lack of a better term) a "conditional" fourth grade class for those who left the third grade significantly behind (that is, in Level 1) in ELA and/or math.
Separate classes are not ideal in many circumstances, but in a system like ours they make it easier to provide and to monitor the intensive services and supports that are needed for our kids in this situation. That way we can guarantee that the students who are entitled to services actually receive them.
Excuse the pedagogy talk, but what we think makes the critical difference is avoiding the "deficit model." These classrooms must not be after-thoughts, wedged into converted book rooms or isolated on the basement level. Ideally, every one would look like those in the Tweed Academy , so kids who went there would be envied, not scorned.
Furthermore, if parents really believed that their children would have classes like these, with their small size, perhaps 15 students, a classroom paraprofessional and a full range of support services, including counseling, family supports and health, provided by a local public health facility, we believe they would buy in. (By the way, linking schools and community health facilities is just one way the system can take advantage of being a mayoral agency, linked with other city agencies.)
And to establish this buy-in, we propose that parents themselves should have a new relationship with the school, where they are both welcomed and held accountable, via a signed agreement, for helping their children, just as the school is held accountable for doing its part. And then schools could train parents on how to help their children at home.
The instructional program, as I mentioned, would be tailored for the needs of learners who have not gained basic skills with less structured approaches. The instructors should be expert teachers with proven skills who are recruited for the assignment by an incentive program that would have to be negotiated between the DOE and UFT. This is something we have always been willing to talk about, and this is the perfect example of where such an agreement would be valuable. This opportunity would have to be voluntary on the part of the teachers who would have to be highly qualified. And the professional development for those teachers should be collaboratively developed and specifically designed for the kind of instruction and the kind of classroom situations they face.
Now, why do I call it a "conditional" fourth grade? Well, for one thing, other than the subject in which the child lags far behind, the curriculum would be grade-appropriate. There is no sense in holding a child back to third-grade math that he has already mastered or making him repeat third-grade science lessons because his English reading skills are poor. This is particularly important for English language learners who may be doing much better with numbers, which are universal, than with reading in an unfamiliar language.
But mainly, it's a conditional fourth grade because it gives students one last chance to move ahead with their peers. Not half a chance, not six to eight weeks, but a serious full year chance to move ahead. We believe that most kids will get out of Level 1 by the end of the year and be able to advance to the fifth grade. (And, aside from being right educationally, this plan would quell the objections of the cynics who believe the only reason the mayor picked the third grade is political - so that Level 1 students won't show up in fourth grade test scores the year he is running for re-election.)
Those who don't pass the conditional fourth grade should be retained in a fourth grade class but with a guarantee that they will receive the additional services they need. Each of those children should have an Special Needs Instructional Agreement, similar to the IEP that is used for special education students, which the parent agrees to and which is monitored regularly for compliance. It should contain the school day, before and after school instruction and other assistance that the DOE apparently plans to make the heart of its retention policy in the third grade. Where there are large concentrations of retained fourth graders, extra teachers could be added for supplemental instruction during the day.
Is this an expensive program? Perhaps, although probably far less expensive than swelling existing third grade enrollment by 30 percent, which could be the result of the DOE's proposed approach.
In any case, instruction must drive the budget, not the other way around. The bottom line is this: The driving force must be children's needs. If we embark on a new strategy such as ending social promotion, it must be done not to win accolades in the press but to really help children.
