9486 in the collection  

Most Students Who Repeat Grades Fail MCAS

Ohanian comment: A Globe analysis? Haney and Wheelock have been doing this analysis for years. Not Driscoll's dismissive 'anyway' in the last sentence. These kids are regarded as failures anyway, so who cares?

It began in 1998, just before students had to start passing MCAS to graduate. Districts around the state began holding back more ninth-graders than usual, believing that it is better to flunk students than to force them to take the high-stakes test and classes they're not ready for.

But a Globe analysis of Boston student records suggests that it is an experiment that merits further review. Only about a third of the students in the class of 2003 who repeated ninth grade and took the MCAS passed it.

And nearly half of those ninth-grade repeaters are no longer attending Boston schools. Of the 661 who have left, nearly two-thirds either dropped out, entered GED programs, or have vanished - the district has no record of why they left.

Another 800 or so of the repeaters still attend Boston schools, but only two out of five have caught up with their peers and are seniors this year, according to the student records.

The numbers - particularly the MCAS passing rate of the ninth-graders held back - drew an expression of concern from the state's top education official who has defended the practice.

''I would have thought the numbers would have been higher,'' state Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll said of the 37 percent MCAS passing rate among the Boston repeaters. ''That's a discouraging statistic.''

Driscoll cautioned against drawing conclusions from the passing rate but said it's worth studying. The city records the Globe analyzed covered only the class of 2003, so comparisons could not be made to passing rates among students held back in previous classes when the MCAS was not a graduation requirement.

Schools have long held back students for various reasons. But in the last several years, the percentage of ninth-graders held back statewide has climbed steadily from 6.3 percent to 8.4 percent.

Proponents of the controversial practice say that in an age of tougher standards, the expectation that all students should and can finish high school in four years is obsolete and that some students simply need more time.

On the other hand, critics say flunking students in high school often leads to them dropping out.

In Boston, the jump in retentions coincided with a tougher district promotion policy and more difficult course requirements for graduation. But failing a grade can be somewhat misleading in many districts, where students who repeat ninth grade are taking mainly 10th-grade courses but still are classified as ninth-graders because they failed a particular class or two.

''In the old days, students got rewarded for effort,'' said Jane O'Leary, assistant headmaster at East Boston High School, where 42 percent of freshmen in the original class of 2003 repeated the grade the next year. ''A student who came to school all the time and tried was rewarded. Not anymore.''

But holding students back doesn't mean that they'll stay in school.

It's difficult to know how much failing a grade contributes to student decisions to leave school. Drop-outs do, of course, tend to be poor academic performers.

''Most of these kids are at tremendous risk anyway,'' Driscoll said.



— Michelle Kurtz
Most students who repeat grades fail MCAS
Boston Globe
June 1, 2003
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/152/learning/Most_students_who_repeat_grades_fail_MCAS_Boston_school_records_show+.shtml

---

INDEX OF OUTRAGES

Pages: 380   
[1] 2 3 4 5 6  Next >>    Last >>