Reply to BASIS DC will seek to expand to include K to 4th grade

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Reply to "BASIS DC will seek to expand to include K to 4th grade"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]having an individual kid repeat a grade isn’t going to improve that kid’s academic or life outcomes at all,[/quote]

Do you have a citation for this? A long time ago, my sibling finished first grade unable to read. My family moved that summer and enrolled my sibling in first grade again at a different school in a different state. That time, it sunk in and my sibling learned to read well.

My kid attended a public Gifted & Talented program. One kid had a horrible year--parents divorced and mom then killed in a car crash. Father refused to take the kid in because he had a girlfriend who didn't want the kid. He ended up being taken in by relatives. The school held him back.  None of the kids thought he was dumb; they understood his mommy had died, he had to live with people he didn't know well, and so he hadn't paid much attention in school.

I attended Catholic schools. There were kids, usually boys, who were held back. In one case by the time 8th grade graduation rolled around, one of them was near the top of the class. Yes, sometimes parents would send these kids to public school--where they usually  had to repeat a grade anyway, but their classmates didn't know that.

Now, you may be right that holding kids back a year doesn't work in the aggregate. Yes, you may be able to establish that a higher percentage of them don't finish high school vs. students who weren't held back. But what's  the control group of students who were not helf back? Is it all kids who weren't held back? If so, that's irrelevant. The control group for comparison should be students who didn't meet the standards for the grade but were socially promoted anyway. Do those kids catch up? If so, you're right that it's better to socially promote kids. But DC schools have lots of kids who are already 3 or more grades behind by the time they take 5th grade PARRC test---so I have my doubts that socially promoting kids enables them to catch up with their peers.

Lots of people who are functionally illiterate graduate from high school . They don't magically go on to live productive lives. There are public high schools in DC at which less than 5 per cent of students are on grade level for reading and math. Do you think employers are impressed by diplomas from those schools? Do you think that people with high school diplomas who read at a fifth grade level and do math at third grade level become successful employees?

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+1 The kids who "graduate" with a 4th grade education don't get jobs. Unless you count carjacking and other crime. When they are arrested the same people who are in favor of social promotion put their sad faces on and lament how society has failed those poor kids. At no point do they look in the mirror and consider for one moment whether foisting those "graduates" on the world without basic skills contributed to that child's station in life.  [/quote]

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