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Promoting failureBy KENT FISCHER and STEPHEN HEGARTY © St. Petersburg Times, published May 17, 1998 This year Hillsborough County is enforcing tough standards children will have to meet in order to earn a promotion to the next grade. The new standards -- called benchmarks -- have Valdes expecting more retentions this year than she's had in a long, long time. She's worried about that. Still, the principal at Cleveland Elementary School in Tampa is determined to enforce the new standards. "We cannot keep putting students into middle school who can't read; we know that," she said. It's a 180-degree switch. In years past, students were virtually automatically promoted to the next grade. At Cleveland Elementary last year, 98 percent of the students were promoted, even though a only quarter of its fourth graders' reading scores were at or above the national median last year. District wide, elementary schools annually promote 96 percent of their students. "We did promote students who weren't on grade level, and we don't want to do that anymore," said Beth Shields, a deputy superintendent who was a driving force behind the new standards. The new policies are meant to stop the automatic promotions by setting basic standards students will have to meet at key grades. The requirements will act as fire walls, placed at critical times in a child's schooling, officials say. To help students prepare for the tough graduation standards, district officials created benchmarks for the second, fifth and eighth grades. Those benchmarks were implemented this year } a year before similar standards will go into effect statewide. Students who can't reach the benchmarks, will be held back and will receive intense remediation, Shields said. The new standards also brought about changes in how students are remediated. The district has always used much of its federal aid to reduce class sizes in schools with many poor children. But now it's also spending the money on training reading tutors, offering after-school and summer tutoring, and training middle school teachers in how to teach reading. Those aspects are key, Shields said, to prevent students from quitting school after their retentions.
Valdes has had mixed feelings about the new policies. When she first heard of them, she thought they might do more harm than good in the long run. But over the course of the school year, she's had a change of heart because she also knows the consequences of social promotions. "If we don't hold fast, parents won't take us seriously, students won't take us seriously," Valdes said. "We're telling them, "You need to pass the benchmarks.' Well, either you pass the benchmarks or you don't."
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ducators like Cathy Valdes are extremely hesitant to hold back students. Years of experience showed them retentions gnaw at a child's self confidence and push them toward becoming dropping outs.
