More schools consider retention key to achievement

Last year, Kailee Stites was not happy to hear that she would be held back in 5th grade at James Irwin Elementary School.

“I was afraid I would miss my friends,” she says.

Kailee’s  mother Tammy Stites had some doubts and lots of questions, too, about retaining her daughter versus automatic promotion to the next grade. “All I knew is that I wanted her to succeed and she was struggling.”

When parents sign their kids up for this Harrison School District 2 charter school, they agree to retention — meaning if their kids aren’t ready for the next grade they aren’t promoted.

“It’s a controversial subject in education,” says James Irwin Principal Elizabeth Berg. “All students have unique learning rates. We don’t push them ahead prematurely.”

The school’s leadership has not caved in since the policy’s inception in 2005, though a handful of parents have pulled their kids from the school because of it.

It’s a quandary more and more parents and students may find themselves in as schools across the country rethink the promotion and retention in a scramble to live up to federal mandates to better prepared  kids  for college and the workplace. Some states require districts to keep students at the same grade level, especially in lower grades, until they are proficient.

To some it’s a get tough policy that  flies in the face of a few older studies that indicated retained kids were harmed  academically and socially, and it could be more costly to districts.

But there is a growing number of educators, some in El Paso County, who are determined to end social promotion in favor of  what they call “the gift of time” — which they say helps students achieve with dignity.

It is a seismic shift. These pioneering schools and states are  trying to remove the stigma that it is shameful to take extra time to create confidence and mastery.

In Colorado, where districts make the decisions, retention is not common. But educators question whether the  reluctance to change policies is contributing to severe academic woes.

Consider the statistics:   

• Nearly 28 percent of Colorado students do not graduate from high school, with dropout rates among minorities particularly high.

• Nationally, remediation rates are climbing. Students who needed remedial classes at two-year colleges was 44 percent in 2007, and 30 percent at four-year public colleges. In Colorado, the 2009  remediation rates were  52.8 percent and 18.23 percent. In  El Paso County, 28 percent of college students needed remedial classes.

Adding fuel to the social promotion debate is a study released recently by Colorado Department of Education that shows students who needed remediation in college could have been identified by looking at achievement results as early as sixth grade.

Students have been pushed ahead for reasons good and bad:  

• Belief that older kids would drop out rather than repeat;

• Some teachers found it easier to pass their problem students on to another teacher;

• Lack of good catch-up tutoring models;

• Reliance on early research studies (now said to have had erroneous and subjective methodology) that indicated holding kids back didn’t help much, and that some kids just can’t learn;

• Parental pressure to promote, made particularly emotional because they feel they have failed their  children.

Pioneering states such as Indiana, Florida and Texas, and large urban districts in Chicago and Philadelphia, are proving the naysayers wrong, reporting academic successes for students who are retained. Instead of social promotion, the students must demonstrate a level of mastery in basic skills on standardized tests before they are promoted.

Those same states place emphasize the move from third grade to fourth grade because those who cannot read at that point fall further and further behind.

In Florida’s program, low performing students subject to the retention policy have had significant gains in reading and math — greater than control groups of those who were promoted, said Marcus Winters, assistant professor of education at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.

Students who were socially promoted fell further behind over time, while those held back caught up, and in many cases leapfrogged the others, said Winters, coauthor of several Manhattan Institute studies on the Florida program.

Winters was one of several panelists who spoke at a recent Social Promotion Symposium in Colorado Springs sponsored by Pikes Peak United Way.

The educators on the panel advocated retaining kids that fall behind, but noted that most schools are dragging their heels.  

“It feels punitive to them, but it is not punishment. But it is dramatic because it is rarely done,” Winters said.

Panelist Aimee Cox, a Manitou parent and mayor pro tem, wasn’t convinced. “Parents believe it is socially damaging and that kids held back develop bad behaviors to compensate for not doing well.”

Several parents in the audience said they welcomed retention for their children. Corrie Newkirk, said she had to practically beg administrators to retain one of her children in both kindergarten and first grade.

“They were concerned that once he hit 18 it would be hard to keep in him in school. I said, ‘you let me worry about that.’ On this end I want him to make it.” He needed particular help, and officials relented. Now he is in fourth grade at  a charter school and doing well, she says.  
The symposium experts agreed that therein lies the problem: how do you shift the cultural perspective that holding kids back can actually help propel them forward? How, in other words, can schools create an academic culture where all can learn at their own rate?

Part of the problem, the experts noted, is that this is a “hurry up country” where there is no time to get things right,  where keeping up with the Joneses is paramount whether it is a big house or college at 16 because a friend’s daughter is doing it.

In many cases parents feel they have failed if their child  is retained. And teachers feel they have failed if the kid sticks around another year. Instead, the experts say the emphasis should be on the student. It is the student who needs the success and satisfaction of doing the work.  

“People say that retaining kids is emotionally upsetting. Well so is not being able to read, get a diploma and a good job,” said panelist Tim Taylor, president of Colorado Succeeds. “Self esteem should be driven by competency, not from lying to children that they have skills to move forward when they don’t.”

He added, “Reform is difficult, but possible.”

Indiana took the plunge last year, requiring students who can’t read at grade level by the time they finish third grade to be retained. In the spring of 2012 the first group of third graders will be assessed.

Tony Bennett, Indiana’s superintendent of public instruction, notes that some elementary teachers are being taught to be reading specialists in conjunction with the change.

Florida, which has been holding kids back since 2002, has created intensive remedial programs and assessments. The state also put in place other education reforms to help make it happen such as letter grades, bonuses for teachers and schools for each student who pass Advance Placement, tax credits so low income students can attend schools of their parents’ choice.

Locally, Harrison School District 2 – where 70 percent of the students are impoverished and many are at risk of dropping out – is the first district to take on the social promotion issue.

In the next four years, D-2 intends to retain kids who are not reading proficiently in grades 3, 5 and 8.

As part of a new five-year plan, this fall it will place up to 120 at-risk 8th graders in the Harrison Preparatory Academy, a new intensive program, instead of promoting them. The goal is to prepare them better so they will stay in high school.  

Such changes can’t be accomplished in a year or two, says Superintendent Mikes Miles. The whole system must be adjusted. For example, new teachers in grades K-3 will attend a three-week academy to learn how to jumpstart kids. The district also instituted a performance plan in which teachers are paid. In part, based on student performance.

James Irwin Elementary,  has offered the “gift of time” since its founding in 2005.   

“It’s a gift of slowing down and mastering the subjects. And it’s a gift that keeps on giving,” says Cindy Will, vice principal.

Will explains the philosophy. “All kids can learn. If we didn’t believe that, we’d say move on to the next grade.”

Principal Berg notes that a student struggles when he or she hasn’t mastered the skills,  sometimes developing sleep disorders and stomach aches and hates school. “It is difficult to undo,” Berg says.   

The model that James Irwin uses is not the typical retention model where students simply redo an entire grade. Instead, the kids move forward from where they have achieved mastery, whether it is lesson two or lesson 92. In each grade, there are different performance groups for reading, math and spelling, depending on ability. They are in regular classes for history, science, writing and cursive and poetry.

For example, in third grade, there are eight separate and fluid groups for reading that meet in different locations at the same time. Students can move from one to another, depending on their academic achievement based on assessments and data analysis.

Students do their best work when the instruction is just a bit above their mastery level so they gain confidence to move to the next step,  Berg says.

This model allows for every student to have his or her individual education plan. All students have two math periods, two reading, and one each of poetry, writing, spelling and cursive penmanship.

Unlike many schools, James Irwin often places its best teachers with the groups that need the most attention. The classes are fast paced with much chanting  and shout-outs of lessons. This  creates a classroom  engagement rate higher than  90 percent, Berg says. A typical schools has a rate of 75 percent or less.

And testament that all this works when it counts,  the school’s CSAP scores are exemplary.

For example, the 5th graders were 98 percent proficient and advanced in math. In 4th grade, where there are a number of students with language challenges, they had the highest writing score in El Paso County. The reading scores so important to general learning, also were high.

The school has created an atmosphere around the gift of time that bolsters the self esteem of those retained, making them class leaders who help students with work they have mastered.

Kailee’s initial fears about the gift of time were unfounded.

She even decided  to break the news to her class in a talk, explaining that she would not be going on to middle school, and instead, she had a new role as a leader for the upcoming 5th grade class.

“Kids didn’t laugh at me at all. They were kind of  jealous,” she recalls.

She says that she still sees those classmates and has met a lot of new ones.

“It’s cool. I’ve learned all this stuff. I’m the leader in poetry and now I’m in an even higher math class.”

Her mother Tammy Stites is a believer, too. “She’s doing fantastic.”