The San Diego Union-Tribune has a fairly critical article about a San Ysidro middle school that is allowing every eighth-grader to walk in the graduation ceremony - even those who flunked:
Today, San Ysidro Middle School will recognize 516 eighth-graders in a ceremony to promote them to high school, regardless of whether they passed middle school. More than a fourth of them did not. In today's ceremony, 143 students who either flunked classes, didn't earn at least a 2.0 grade-point average, or missed too many days of school will march alongside those who did everything required of them.Several teachers at the school have protested in staff meetings that students who don't make the grade shouldn't walk in the ceremony. To them, it's a matter of holding students accountable.
"If you don't earn it, you stay home," San Ysidro Middle counselor Rosemarie Ponce said.
The principal, however, notes that all are walking because not one teacher actually filed the paperwork to hold back a student:
Part of Flores' rationale in allowing all comers into the ceremony is that they're all being promoted and leaving the kindergarten-through-eighth-grade San Ysidro School District. No teacher at San Ysidro Middle has filed paperwork to hold back a single student.
Needless to say, the high school teachers awaiting these "graduates" are not happy:
Whether they walk in today's ceremony or not, all 516 students are going to high school next year. And the problem is much worse than the promotion statistics indicate. How many students met promotion criteria and how many walk in the ceremony are irrelevant statistics to Hector Espinoza, principal of San Ysidro High, where today's ceremony will take place. They'll all be his students next year.He just wants to know whether they're ready for ninth grade. He sent a team of teachers out to test middle school students, and they reported back to him that 70 percent of the incoming freshman class at San Ysidro High is not at grade level.
Emphasis mine. The article reports that while retention at the earlier grades may be helpful, retention at the eighth-grade level allegedly does more harm than good. It may increase the drop-out rate, but it's hard to see why promoting a student who is struggling to ninth grade does much for the drop-out rate, either.
Posted by kswygert at June 25, 2005 08:50 AM