Few Students Flunk Anymore, But Will That Advance Them?

JUNE IS no longer the month students find out whether they will be promoted to the next grade. Kids these days know they will be promoted. Public schools have virtually abandoned the practice of flunking students, and some observers question the wisdom of the change. -------------------------------

It once seemed so simple: You flunk your courses, you repeat a grade.

The system seemed to make sense. Hard work was rewarded. Academic standards were maintained. A high-school diploma meant something.

That was the theory, at least.

But a growing number of educational researchers and administrators now believe it is more harmful than helpful to force a student to repeat a grade. In most Puget Sound-area school districts, the practice has been all but abandoned.

"When you flunk a kid, you're sort of giving up on them. We don't want to give up on any kid. We can't," says Dorothy Dubia, Seattle School District spokeswoman.

That view has become dominant among educational opinion-makers. "Frankly, the evidence is pretty conclusive that flunking kids . . . doesn't solve any problems. In fact, it tends to generate more dropouts," says Don Sayan, a faculty member of the School of Education at City University in Bellevue.

The indictment of a practice dating to the Civil War era is based on changing educational philosophies and on research suggesting that holding back failing students:

-- Doesn't help academically.

-- Damages their self-esteem.

-- Increases the likelihood they will drop out.

-- Most often affects low-income, minority boys.

It has become standard practice to promote a student to the next grade, whether or not the student has learned this year's lessons.

Until last fall, the state's largest district, the 45,000-student Seattle School District, promoted high-school students only when they had earned a set number of credits. Now, students are automatically promoted each year until they become seniors. Seattle also discourages the retention of elementary and secondary students.

In the Edmonds School District, which has 20,000 students, 19 elementary and middle-school students were held back in 1992-93 - down from 109 in 1987-88.

The number of elementary students held back in the 12,000-student Renton School District declined from 89 to 33 from 1986-87 to 1987-88. Over a 15-year period, the number dropped from 131 to nine. Nine elementary students were held back in the 11,000-student Auburn district last year, 38 in the 24,000-student Kent district. Those districts have limited the practice for years.

Students who have been held back - or have come close to repeating a grade - have a variety of views about the practice.

Josh Alldredge, a senior at West Auburn High, an alternative school, says he is glad he took first grade a second time to learn the lessons he missed while moving from school to school the first time around.

Amy Mettart, a West Auburn junior, was held back when she failed to read by the end of second grade. She had the same teacher the next year. "She knew what I needed and how to help me out," Mettart said. When she went on to third grade, she was reading at the fourth-grade level.

J.R. Cole, a West Auburn ninth-grader, is grateful for a "pre-first" program that allowed him an extra year to mature between kindergarten and first grade. "I don't want to be a geek - one of those immature children."

Being held back in junior high or senior high is a different matter.

After goofing off in the ninth grade, Kyle Knott didn't have all the credits he needed to enter 10th grade. But instead of staying in junior high and repeating ninth grade, he went on to 10th grade at Kentridge High in Kent. There, he was enrolled in a special transition class where he made up his missing credits and learned to work harder. "Getting held back probably would have really discouraged me and made me not want to do work," Knott said.

Geoff Mollichi, 16, repeated third grade and is now repeating eighth grade in a special program at West Auburn. Because he's being held back, he may be ineligible to play on the Auburn High football team next year - and that, he says, puts his school future in question.

"I'll just be mad if I can't play sports," said Mollichi, "because that's what keeps me in school. If I can't play football, I'm pretty much done for."

Done for. That's been the fate of too many kids who have been held back, many educators believe.

Today's more lenient policies have prompted public skepticism and questions about how the state will attain its goal of "world-class standards" if students are promoted without regard to their academic performance.

"How are you helping someone's self-esteem if you're pushing them through when they're not doing the work and they're falling behind?" says Federal Way School Board member Ann Murphy.

Susan Santie, a Highline School District parent and an unsuccessful School Board candidate last year, worries that children are graduating from high schools without basic reading and math skills because they aren't held accountable.

When Santie entered fourth grade, she recalls, her teacher sent a note to her mother saying that if she didn't learn her multiplication tables quickly she might be sent back to third grade.

"I don't know if it was just a threat, but I sat down with my yellow Pee-Chee and learned all the multiplication tables that night."

Educators aren't sure how the education-reform act, adopted by the Legislature last year, will affect local policies on student promotion. The law calls for new learning standards, but lets local school districts decide when a student may move on to the next grade. More districts are expected to follow the example of several schools in Edmonds, where grade levels have been eliminated and annual promotions are no longer an issue. Under the education-reform law, students may take as long as necessary to obtain a "certificate of mastery" before graduating from high school.

Nationwide, the pendulum has swung back and forth in recent decades. During the 1960s, educators failed fewer students than ever before and "social promotion" became a household term for the new failure-free education. Students' declining performance on standardized tests led to calls for tougher standards.

By 1985, 31 states had adopted stricter requirements for student promotion. Many educational leaders believe the get-tough reforms of the 1970s and 1980s served political rather than educational purposes.

In some states, principals have admitted flunking slower students in order to raise their schools' achievement-test scores. Students elsewhere have been been forced to repeat a grade rather than be tested for learning disabilities.

Louise McKinney, director of the Seattle School District's office of academic achievement, is especially concerned that African-American boys from low-income homes are the students most often held back. "This whole business of blaming the victim - we can't do that," she says. "Kids victimized by society can't be victimized, too, by the schools."

Higher expectations and better teaching methods are a better way to help those children succeed, McKinney suggests. If any consensus has emerged among researchers and administrators, it is that neither social promotion nor retention is a solution for most slower learners.

"Simply recycling children in a grade one more time does not seem to be the best educational choice," says Judy Fichter, curriculum coordinator for the Auburn School District. Instead, many school districts are testing slower students for learning disabilities and are providing tutoring, individually tailored curricula and other services. A new summer-school program in Renton will focus on two of the key problems of failing students: their study and organizational skills.

Some educators still believe children should be held back if they don't master their basic lessons.

"Research suggests that it doesn't work. But it's amazing the number of classroom teachers you will cite the data to and they will simply deny it. They say it can't be true. It doesn't fit their world view," says Duncan MacQuarrie, program supervisor for research and assessment in the state superintendent of public instruction's office.

But as long as many parents and teachers still believe some children benefit from repeating a grade, the practice is unlikely to die out completely in public and private schools.

Michael Foy, principal of Assumption School, a private school in northeast Seattle, is reluctant to retain children in the earliest grades unless they clearly lack the social or emotional maturity to move on.

By the time students reach middle school, however, academic achievement is a prerequisite for promotion.

"I don't think it helps to send a child on who has not learned the skills he needs for the next grade level," Foy says.

If a school weren't willing to retain students who fail to make an effort, he believes, "it would send the wrong message in life. When they get out of school, they're not going to be judged by the quality of their smiles."