Promoting Student Success

A second round of warning notices has been going to parents of struggling students alerting them that their children might have to repeat a grade if their performance doesn’t improve. The notices this time are being sent, and should be received, with a more keen sense of reality.

In the last school year, about 20,000 notices went out under the new state law ending social promotion--the practice of promoting children automatically to the next grade even though they failed to learn.

Despite the attention and extra instruction, more than 5,000 of those students in Orange County were unable to bring their work up to minimum levels and were held back to repeat their grade.

It’s too early to assess the impact of those “retentions,” but educators say that they have no negative reports thus far. These students should be monitored closely for early signs of adjustment problems, academic or otherwise, that being held back might raise.

The schools, with the aid of additional state funds, are offering after-school programs, tutoring, some Saturday sessions, summer school and sessions during the weeks that students in year-round schools are out. Teachers are stepping up efforts to work more closely with parents to bring struggling students up to grade level.

Schools also are trying, wherever possible, to put the repeating students with the strongest teachers. Some schools bring in specialists whose sole job is to come into classrooms and assist regular teachers in working with students lagging behind in their studies.

In the long run, the end of social promotion and the learning of basic skills are good for the student and the community. The thousands of students now repeating a grade, and the thousands of warning notices now going out in this new school year, are reminders to educators and parents of the urgency to find struggling students early in the school year and get them the help they need.