Posted on 06/17/2008 9:07:17 AM PDT by george76
Students earn way by sweat of brow in new program .
Bruce Randolph's bold decision last fall to end social promotion, to inform parents that students who fail core academic classes will not be passed on to the next grade.
"We're changing the culture," said Principal Kristin Waters. "You can't not pass anymore; you have to do the work."
It's an unprecedented stance by a neighborhood school in Denver.
DPS, unlike other metro districts, allows parents to decide whether their children are held back a grade until they reach high school. Few choose to hold them back.
Not until grade nine, the freshman year of high school, do students have to earn a certain number of class credits to be promoted.
But by then, it's too late for many. About one in four DPS students falls behind in their freshman year. That means they've failed enough courses that they have to repeat ninth-grade classes as 10th-grade sophomores.
Of those who fall behind, a Rocky Mountain News analysis found, nearly half, or 45 percent, later drop out of school altogether.
Waters, who took over Bruce Randolph when it was one of the lowest-performing schools in Colorado, decided students should face tougher standards before they hit high school, in grades six, seven and eight.
So last fall, she and her staff called in parents and set contracts before them, asking for signatures.
The terms: If a student does not achieve grade-level proficiency in core academic subjects, the parent agrees he or she will repeat that grade.
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
It causes one to question more and more just what percentage of Colorado teachers could pass the CSAP at the grade level they teach. I'd bet dollars to donuts to all takers that it would be below 50%.
ht comments
wonder why most Public Schools are a failure ?
The “social promotion” idea is carried over into the work place where workers complain about their job and how they are treated all day... complain about management and that nothing gets done... and then they complain when someone who hasn’t been there as long as they have get’s promoted ahead of them... someone who doesn’t spend the day complaining, but accomplishing.
On the flip side of social promotion, my parents and the schools seriously considered holding me back a year because I was younger and smaller than everyone else in my grade. I started Kindergarten at age 4 (birthday in October) and was small for my age. Always pulling straight “A”s wasn’t enough to convince the wise acedemics who thought I belonged with children my own age and size.
What a bunch of dolts.
Enter the union and their philosophy of nothing moving faster than the slowest worker. These people are worthless parasites.
Affirmative action and “social promotion” are terrible ideas.
Bad for the student and bad for America.
Their students may be the only educated public school grads in the country.
Keep up the good work Kristin Waters!
My parents tried to get me to hold my son back a year in kindergarten. He turned 5 in September.
We didn’t.
He is now 13, and just finished middle school. He made 3 B+’s in all of middle school, and he took high school Algebra I and Geometry while in middle school. He also hit puberty early and was taller than most of his friends and shaving by 12.
He is so ready for high school! I can’t imagine him still having another year of middle school to go.
My only thing with all of this is that the public schools tend to ignore children with learning disabilities until it is too late.
My daughter is like this. She does not qualify for any special needs services (even though she has a brain injury). The public school would not provide services until she fell below the 7th percentile. That’s very low (and she used to qualify for speech with that percentile).
In 3rd grade, we had an independent evaluation that showed my daughter had all sorts of memory, auditory, and speech problems, but the school district only wanted to make accomodations for her and they didn’t want to provide any remediation.
We pulled her out of public school and put her in a private school with pull out for a multi-sensory reading program. My daughters reading and spelling went up using this program. We also provided 2 hours of private therapy, and my daughters speech increased a lot by going to private therapy.
Even with these extra services, my daughter is still only at grade level for reading. I can’t imagine how bad it would have been without the services. She would have kept falling behind, and we would have never been able to get her from falling behind.
Now, we just have to keep her hanging on to grade level work.
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