Because I’ve been trying to finish my book, “Below C Level,” write proposals for funding and report from New Orleans for the NewsHour, I missed blogging last week.
It’s the latter story that I am compelled to write about now.
Valerie Visconti, Jane Renaud and I filmed in two alternative schools in Paul Vallas’ Recovery School District in New Orleans, including one school for what educators call “overage students,” which is their benign term for kids who have fallen three, four or five grade levels behind. Being “overage” means you are 16 or 17 years old and testing at a sixth- or seventh-grade level. Your peers are in high school, but you are going to middle school!
How does that happen? How does a kid who hasn’t learned enough to be promoted get moved up anyway?
Here’s what I have been able to figure out. Louisiana administers a state test called LEAP in the fourth and eighth grades, which students must pass to move into fifth grade and ninth grade, respectively. The teenagers at Booker T. Washington Alternative School passed the fourth-grade LEAP — that much we know.
But what happened next? Somehow they were promoted THREE times by their teachers and their schools. It might have happened a FOURTH time if the state hadn’t checked up again in eighth grade. Only then was someone held accountable.
And guess who was held accountable? The students, not the adults who had let the kids fall through the cracks. The students were told that they were deficient and could not move on to high school. Are some of these young people angry? Wouldn’t you be?
To her credit, principal Rosemary Martin — in her first year there — is candid. “We understand that somewhere along the road someone dropped the ball,” she told me.
She said that she tells students it’s not their fault and urges them to focus on the future. “I tell them,” she said, “’’We know that some things happen. But we want to take you to where you need to be. Allow us an opportunity to take you where you should be at, at this point.’ And most of them will say, ‘Okay.’”
I pushed her. “Are you willing to acknowledge that these kids got screwed?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes, we have to acknowledge that. That’s the first step, acknowledgment.”
I am not a fan of cheap bubble tests, but, when you hear stories like this one, how could anyone argue against LEAP or tests like it? If some adults in our schools are going to find excuses for promoting students whose skill levels are inadequate, then we need more LEAP-like tests, not fewer.
I am familiar with the arguments in favor of social promotion, that kids need to be with their age group, that their self esteem suffers when they are with kids who are four, five and six years younger, and that the younger kids can be victimized by the older youth. Some teachers are under so much pressure with overcrowded classes and such that they end up having to triage. Or perhaps they decide to promote a kid when they realize the alternative is to have him in their class again next year. Whatever the reasons, I think that “retention versus social promotion” is a false dilemma. Neither option is a good one.
The only viable option is to track progress carefully and intervene right away when kids start falling behind. We need regular testing, we need to trust teachers and their evaluations, and we need to provide the resources those teachers need. It shouldn’t take a state-mandated test to “prove” that some kids need help.
And finally, the adults who let this happen must be accountable for their failure. They should not be allowed to collect a paycheck for their mediocre work. (That, by the way, is the argument of my new book.)
When you see the NewsHour piece, I think you will be inclined to approve of what Vallas and his team are trying to do for these “overage” youth. Booker T. Washington middle school seems to have become de facto “ungraded” in that no one reminds the students that they are still in, say, sixth grade rather than eighth. Rather, the kids know that they must pass the LEAP test and, when they do, they move on to high school.
The school has what amounts to an anger management class, which it needs. In the piece you will meet one terrific young teacher who uses a so-called “smart board” to make basic grammar, spelling and punctuation a fun game.
But I walked away wondering why school systems create alternatives only after years of failing at the same old stuff. Talk about being ‘overage’ learners!
My colleagues Jane Renaud and Cat McGrath accepted the invitation on the spot. As Jane recalls, “She told us to come back at a specific time, and so we got a sandwich, returned to her office, set up the equipment, and shot the meeting.”
Is it too over-the-top to propose that this is akin to America’s high schools today? Students are certainly not slaves, but at times they are a bit like indentured servants, who, if they put in their seat-time for a set number of days and years, will receive diplomas and be done with schooling. They will be free.
These are important questions at any time, but I submit they are of particular importance today, with Teach for America (and other alternative routes into the classroom) growing in popularity.
In mid-December the New York Times reported that 
