Monday, Dec. 31, 1973

They Shall Not Pass

The most heated educational debate of the mid-1950s centered on "why Johnny can't read." That issue continues to raise the temperatures of parents and educators, but for many urban school systems the real problem now is what to do with Johnny if he can't read.

This month, in a break with recent policy, New York City's school system announced that it will no longer promote students who lag far behind their grade level in reading ability.

For the past six years, the nation's largest urban school system (enrollment 1,490,000) has passed elementary school pupils on from grade to grade even when they have been as much as 2 1/2 years behind the norm for their grade in reading. From now on, however, students in grades four through eight will not be promoted if they are more than a year behind. Even under the new policy, slow readers would not be forced to languish year after year in the same grade. Except in rare cases, students will not be held back more than once in elementary and once in junior high. Those who repeatedly fail to meet eighth-and ninth-grade standards will nonetheless eventually be admitted to high school.

Regressive Policy. Despite these escape clauses, there was an immediate outcry from some educators who had reservations about the new policy. "It is regressive in the face of most research," protested Helen Wise, president of the National Education Association. "If you hold back a slow child, he will get slower." Many educators argued that keeping students from advancing with their age group would damage them psychologically.

Many other school systems practice automatic promotion in some form, often by setting age limits beyond which a child will not be kept in elementary school. Says a Los Angeles school official: "Our policy is, if a kid has started to shave and his voice is changing, he no longer belongs in elementary school."

But automatic promotion has produced as many problems as it has solved. Says Illinois School Superintendent Michael Bakalis, who is pushing a "back to basics" (i.e., emphasizing reading and math) program in his state: "Employers complain to me that the kids can't fill out a job application, they can't spell, they can't read, they don't have much capacity to function properly." In Oakland, Calif., where a third of the high school seniors have reading and math skills below eighth-grade level, Director of Pupil Personnel Robert Williams recommends that employers consult teachers before hiring high school graduates.

Students themselves are increasingly aware of their own--or their schools' --failings. "Why did they keep passing me when they saw I wasn't keeping up in reading?" asked one high school student at a conference for slow readers in Manhattan last spring. "Did they want to get rid of me instead of helping me?" In one of the most dramatic protests, a student who graduated from San Francisco's Galileo High School with reading skills at the fifth-grade level has filed a $500,000 suit against the board of education for not fulfilling its duty to teach him to read.

San Francisco's Deputy City Attorney Burk Delventhal argues that to hold schools liable when children fail to learn "would make public education unfeasible." Many educators insist that in an era of mass public education, the schools must have flexible standards. Says Chicago Assistant Superintendent Ellen Brachtl: "Under no circumstances would we refuse to accept a student into high school. He should know that there is no closed door, nothing that locks him into one situation."

But Education Professor Staten Webster of the University of California at Berkeley sympathizes with the New York City decision. "A kid might feel bad when he doesn't get promoted," he says. "But that is better than finding that his life is ruined because he can't do anything." Furthermore, he adds, "You can't promote him simply on the theory that he is too old to keep back. To slap him into a junior high school compounds his chances of failure."

Then what can be done for the pupil who is not promoted? Many learn little more during their second or even third repeat than during their first year in a grade. Under the new New York City policy, says School Chancellor Irving Anker, pupils who are "left back" will be given "individually prescribed programs" based on their deficiencies and needs. Skeptical New York City teachers applaud his intentions, but many doubt that the money, classroom space and skilled teachers are available to give slow readers the attention they so desperately need.

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