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Op-Ed Contributor: A Failure Policy That Succeeds
March 30, 2004
By MARLENE HEATH
CHICAGO - I'll never forget the little girl who sat with a
book, ran her fingers across the words, turned the pages
and pretended to be reading. She was in one of my first
fourth-grade classes at the Beethoven Elementary School on
the South Side and we quickly discovered she couldn't
recognize the simplest of words, like "in," "it" and "the."
That was in 1990, when we thought holding a child back a
grade would hurt his or her self-esteem. So while my pupil
was noticeably behind her peers in reading, she and others
like her were pushed through each grade anyway, often
struggling so much that, hopeless, they dropped out of
school at the first chance.
In 1995, Mayor Richard M. Daley began the process of ending
this practice, known as social promotion, much to the
skepticism of teachers in the Chicago public school system
- including me. We decided we'd take a wait-and-see
position and let the new policy run its course until we
could go back to the old way of doing things. Surprisingly,
the results converted even the most obstinate among us.
Now, the decision by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York
City to end social promotion is being met with the same
doubt that many of us in Chicago first expressed almost a
decade ago. But as the debate continues, the figures in
Chicago speak for themselves:
Only 26 percent of our elementary students were able to
meet national norms on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in
reading in 1995. That number is now 41 percent. At
Beethoven alone, reading comprehension jumped to 46 percent
last year from 22 percent in 1997.
About 48 percent of Chicago public school students tested
in the lowest quarter nationally before social promotion
ended. Now that number is half of what it was. The high
school drop-out rate, which was nearly 17 percent in 1995,
is now at 13 percent, while the graduation rate has
steadily climbed.
But the students who have come through my classrooms over
the last 14 years offer the most convincing evidence that
retention is one of the best things we can do for a child
who needs that extra year to develop literacy skills. I
began teaching sixth graders in 1992, and shortly after
social promotion ended, I began to see students who were
much better prepared. This new caliber of students allowed
me to do what I should have been able to do all along -
teach sixth-grade-level work to all my students. That
hadn't been possible with the two or three nonreaders who
had passed each year through my class before.
Today, I'm a reading specialist at Beethoven. And what
critics of Chicago's promotion and retention policy fail to
realize is that becoming literate is not simply learning
how to read. It's also the beginning of learning social
studies, science and math. Those of us who know how to read
take it for granted and forget how deeply rooted the
ability to read is in every discipline.
Last week, the Chicago Board of Education made some changes
to its promotion policy, including the creation of an
intensive reading program as well as a ban on holding back
a student more than twice between kindergarten and the
eighth grade. The changes have once again emboldened
critics, who say that our public schools are not getting
desired results from the policy. They couldn't be more
wrong. The new measures will only strengthen our resolve to
end social promotion. The road to success is a long one,
but we are well on our way.
Nothing is more rewarding than to help a struggling child
and watch as the light bulb of learning pops on. Serving
the pupils at Beethoven, almost 100 percent living in
poverty and many in public housing, is extremely important
to me. Beethoven is one of the better-performing public
schools on the South Side. And yet I know that if the
education system fails to give these children what they
need to succeed, there's another, illegal system awaiting
them.
My only regret about ending social promotion in Chicago is
that it didn't come sooner. I hate to imagine what happened
to the little girl who had learned only how to imitate the
act of reading. I fear that for every year we allowed her
and those like her to move on, we condemned her to fall
further behind in school, as well as in life.
Marlene Heath teaches reading at Beethoven Elementary
School in Chicago.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/opinion/30HEAT.html?ex=1081694918&ei=1&en=376fa0292325e147
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