L.A. Schools Brace for Task of Holding Back Thousands

With a sense of heavy responsibility, teachers and principals are preparing to hold back thousands of second- and eighth-graders under the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new crackdown on social promotion.

Few would argue with the need to end the widespread practice of advancing students to the next grade even when they are not academically ready. But educators who must enforce the new rules dread the inevitable social and logistical impacts of holding back so many students who for years were sent on despite failing grades.

Thousands of young people will face the devastating prospect of repeating a grade at their schools. Overcrowded campuses may be forced to bus out higher-achieving students to make room for those who are held back. And already stressed teachers will have to contend with testy parents demanding ironclad evidence of their child’s academic failure.

“It’s going to be tough on everybody,” said Howard Lappin, principal at Foshay Learning Center, a kindergarten through 12th-grade school near USC. “We’re holding kids accountable for eight years of education that did not teach to standards--so they’re sacrificial lambs. Beyond that, nobody knows where . . . we’re going to put them all.

“But we had to do it--now,” he added. “These kids have to learn.”

Like districts across the country, Los Angeles Unified has been struggling to define standards that will determine whether a student passes or fails. Howard Miller, the district’s chief operating officer, has said, however, that if students were held back for failure to perform at grade level, two-thirds of all eighth-graders and 40% to 60% of all students in second through eighth grade would not be promoted.

Concluding that the district could not handle the disruption of such large-scale retention, interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines and Miller have scaled back the district’s original more ambitious plans to grades two and eight only, and lowered the standard for promotion to a 2 in second-grade reading and a D in eighth-grade English.

Under the new guidelines, a recent sampling of schools showed that at least 6,000 second-graders and 4,000 eighth-graders--about a tenth of the students enrolled in those classes--would be in danger of being held back. District officials say there are 15 middle schools with 100 or more students at risk of retention.

The policy will gradually raise the grade required to pass and will include more grades and subjects.

Notices will be sent home next month informing the parents of failing students that their children still can advance with their classmates by passing a writing test this spring, raising their English grades to Ds by July, or graduating from summer intervention classes.

What bothers most of two dozen educators interviewed last week is the perception that the district is rushing to implement the program before it resolves the social and logistic issues.

“Why didn’t we think this all through before we left the gate?” asked Cynthia Augustine, principal at Columbus Middle School in Canoga Park.

Only last week the district began investigating the possibility of leasing space in hospitals and setting up bungalows in teachers’ parking lots for the anticipated crush of retainees.

The district does not intend to have students repeat the same class they failed. Instead, students will be placed in classrooms or learning centers where they will receive curriculum tailored to their needs. Hospitals would be choice locations for the centers, district officials said, because they meet strict safety requirements for school buildings.

At a meeting last week on ending social promotion, San Fernando Valley teachers and principals complained to district administrators about finding skilled teachers for summer intervention classes. “Good luck finding good teachers,” one second-grade teacher mumbled.

Many teachers expressed concerns that district officials have yet to show how they will provide the training needed to ensure that all children are held to the same standard. The primary grades are using a new report card that relies on a numerical grading scale some teachers find confusing.

District officials say teachers will soon begin receiving special training on how to deal with the new policy.

“It’s a horrible feeling to fail a student,” said Tacy Keyser, an eighth-grade teacher at Portola Middle School in Tarzana. “Part of the F is my F also.

“But there are some students who just don’t care,” she said. “Some have told me, ‘I don’t care if I get an F.’ ”

In the teachers’ lounge at Foshay Learning Center, instructors have been considering various ways the new policy will affect them.

“If I were a first-year teacher I’d think long and hard about holding kids back,” said Kate McFadden-Midby, an eighth-grade English teacher. “They’d better have all their ducks in a row if they do it. And they’d better be ready to take the heat.

“The risk is that parents will march into the school,” she added, “and say, ‘Prove it.’ ”

Sometimes, the proof is overwhelming, as it was for Judy Lyttle in the 1980s when she was a young teacher at Arlington Heights Elementary School in Los Angeles. She had a second-grade girl who had just moved to California from Mexico and had never been to school before.

“She didn’t know her numbers or colors, couldn’t speak English or read in Spanish,” said Lyttle, who now teaches gifted students at Welby Way Elementary in West Hills. “I had to hold her back.”

Still, one first-year, emergency credential teacher in the San Fernando Valley who struggles with a second-grade class of students with limited English skills, said, “I’m not looking forward to giving my first F.

“I have not had the experience in retaining students. It’s a little overwhelming,” said the teacher, who asked that her name and school remain anonymous.

Teachers also expressed concern that they might be unfairly penalized if they have large numbers of students who fail.

“We have no control over a student’s home life,” said one West Valley teacher. “We all know of students who come from broken homes, whose parents are getting a divorce, who come to school hungry. All these factors make it difficult for a student to succeed.”

Last year officials estimated that half of the district’s 711,000 students were not performing at grade level, as measured by the Stanford 9 standardized test, and could be forced to repeat a grade.

For May Yee, a seasoned second-grade instructor at Haskell Elementary School, the push to end social promotion is additional evidence that teachers are being overwhelmed with new rules and duties even as their students are being pushed to their limits.

“Getting so tough on kids is taking all the joy out of learning,” said Yee, a 26-year veteran. “And throwing so many things out at us is taking the fun out of teaching.

“It’s no fun trying to push all this stuff down kids’ throats when they aren’t ready for it,” Yee said. “And I don’t think flunking them is going to help.”

But Yee appears to be in the minority. Even with all their reservations, most teachers and principals interviewed believe it’s a greater disservice to promote failing students than to hold them back.

At the very least, they say, the threat of retention may be what is required to motivate principals, teachers, students and parents to knuckle down a little more.

“I’ve noticed teachers are far more focused on doing everything they can to make sure their kids are moved forward,” said Corby Alsbrook, principal at El Sereno Elementary. “And the attendance at our intervention programs is suddenly very high. Everyone seems eager to take advantage of additional help.

“But you can have all the standards in the world and there will be a certain percentage of students who can’t meet them,” he said. “No one can say what happens to those kids who fail year after year regardless of what we put forth.”