Discouraging news for those concerned with pulling out all stops to help the city’s public school students meet tough new Common Core standards: Principals are sending many fewer kids to summer school, putting attendance at a six-year low.
Which will mean thousands of struggling young people will have long interruptions in their educations — and are that much less likely to make up ground.
This year, the city recommended that just 19,400 third- through eighth-grade students take summer classes — 6.2% of all eligible kids, down from 7.4% last year and 10% the year before that.
And if last year — when just 1.2% of students were held back at the end of summer, half the rate of 2013 — is any indication, that will result in far fewer kids repeating a grade.
The evidence strongly suggests a return to social promotion in the public schools.
One of Mayor Bloomberg’s toughest and most consequential school-reform decisions was to end the practice of passing of young people from grade to grade when they’re falling behind academically, just to keep them with their peers.
The idea was to put focused attention on kids who need the most help as early as possible — and not let them fall deeper and deeper down a hole. For the first time, many were required to attend summer classes in order to move up a grade — exactly the remedy for struggling students.
Last year, about 35% of fourth- through eighth-graders tested at grade level in math, and about 29% in reading. While those numbers were abysmal, they represented slight improvements in student achievement over previous years.
With introduction of the Common Core curriculum, schools now expect kids to learn more and meet higher standards. Yet despite no sizable jump in achievement, the schools are asking far fewer students to keep their noses in the books in the summer months.
City officials say their hands are tied because state law now bars the use of state tests as a major factor in promotion decisions.
Responding to this destructively insane law, the city gave principals more latitude to figure out who goes to summer school and who ultimately gets held back.
“Multiple measures” is the name of the game as a result — which puts the burden on principals to deliver bad news that many of them would rather sidestep.
Whomever you blame, this is the new reality: Even as two-thirds of kids aren’t making the grade, declining numbers are getting an extra season of help.
Dangerously dumb.
