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Retention — and remediation — can help students

August 20, 2012 by

Is Retaining Students in the Early Grades Self-Defeating? asks a Brookings policy brief by Harvard Professor Martin West. Probably not.

Two years after retention at the end of third grade, Florida students who just missed being promoted do better academically than slightly higher-performing classmates who went on to the next grade.

The positive impact of retention on reading achievement is as large as 0.4 standard deviations, an amount which exceeds a typical year’s worth of achievement growth for elementary school students. The impact of retention on math achievement is roughly half as big, perhaps because the remedial services provided to students before and during the retention year focus primarily on reading.

While the benefits fade out by seventh grade, “the retained students continue to perform markedly better than their promoted peers when tested at the same grade level,” West writes. “Although it is too soon to analyze the policy’s effects on students’ ultimate educational attainment and labor-market success,” he thinks “retention and remediation of struggling readers can be a useful complement to broader efforts to reduce the number of students reading below grade level.”

In an earlier post on Florida’s retention policy, I wrote that I wanted to know more about what schools do for students repeating a grade. As it turns out, Florida requires schools to do quite a bit.

First, retained students must be given the opportunity to participate in their district’s summer reading program. Schools must also develop an academic improvement plan for each retained student and assign them to a “high-performing teacher” in the retention year. Finally, retained students must receive intensive reading interventions, including ninety uninterrupted minutes daily of research-based reading instruction (a requirement that has since been extended to all students in grades K-5).

Retention doesn’t seem to help in middle school. In a Chicago study, retention helped third graders, had no effect on sixth graders and increased the likelihood that eighth graders would drop out, adds West.

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Chocolate science is a motivator

July 18, 2011 by

Colorado students are studying the chemistry and biology of chocolate — including determining the DNA fingerprints of different cacao beans — at a summer camp hosted by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Most are entering eighth or ninth grade.

Chocolate was the key ingredient in labs and work sessions that covered forensics, thin-film chromatography, spectroscopy, DNA fingerprinting, robotics and cyber sleuthing.

. . . Students used tools such as microscopes and liquid chromatography equipment in situations that many college students don’t handle until a few years into their coursework.

“The Case of the Recipe Rip-off” focused on solving the fictional disappearance of a prized chocolate recipe. The story including feuding companies, counterfeit candy and even a murder.

Students enjoyed field trips to Patsy’s Candies and Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. When I was in school, our only science field trip was to Volo Bog. No wonder I ended up as an English major.

The Center for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Education designed the program with the chemistry and biology departments, and the UCCS Center for Homeland Security, reports The Gazette. Homeland Security? Are the terrorists trying to contaminate our chocolate?

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NYC retains 8% of eighth graders

September 25, 2010 by

New York City schools are holding back many more third through eighth graders this year, reports the New York Times. Eight percent of eighth graders failed to move on to high school.

Last year, less than 1 percent of the city’s third to eighth graders were held back.  That increased nearly fivefold this year because the state raised the bar on its exams and the city toughened its promotion policy.

Because of budget cuts, no additional money will be devoted to the 11,321 students who failed this year, the city said. Instead, the city will let teachers devote about 37 minutes each week that was intended for tutoring struggling students to developing team-based strategies for how to address the failures. One intervention specialist for every 60 schools, on average, will work with principals to develop these plans.

Student who received a 1, the lowest score, on the state math or English test must be retained, unless the student passes a similar test after summer school. After six weeks of a half-day summer school, only 50 percent of students passed the test, compared with 82 percent last year.

Summer school attendance averaged less than 75 percent for third through eighth graders and 55 percent for high school students, who face a different retention policy.

Holding student back doesn’t help much. Neither does passing them on.

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Summer time and the credits are cheaper

August 19, 2010 by

On Community College Spotlight: For an increasing number of university students, summer is the time to earn low-cost community college credits, reports the Washington Post. Sean Daly, 20, earned nearly a semester’s worth of credit at Montgomery Community College this summer for $1,600.  That means he can spend one less semester at Loyola Marymount, saving more than $26, 000.

Also, Miami Dade Community College students in a special program graduate with a degree, a hard hat and a job at a nuclear power plant.

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In search of summer classes

June 30, 2010 by

On Community College Spotlight: As school districts cut summer school classes, students try community colleges — which may have no room — and online courses.

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Left behind

July 27, 2009 by

Mr. Kim, a Teach for America novice in Washington, D.C.,  tried to explain to JR that he needs to do much better to pass summer school and move on to 10th grade. Asked if he’d review for the final, he said “probably.” After all, he said, did George Bush pass a law about not leaving anyone behind?

We explained that NCLB was about schools and not individual students.

. . . JR didn’t buy it. He expressed his confusion: “Well then why do they still call it ‘No Student Left Behind’?”

We told him we didn’t know.

Mr. Kim also is trying to help LA, who never learned to sound out words phonetically.

He told me after our session that when he “reads” he looks at new words and compares them to the limited set of words he already knows and sees how they are similar.  Based on this familiarity analysis, he literally “guesses” what a word might mean.  He told me he never actually sounds out new words because he doesn’t know how to.  So, when he sees “America” he often says “Americans” since he is more familiar with the latter word and doesn’t actually “read out” the former.

These students were left behind years ago.

Teach for America teachers are finishing their summer training — four hours of sleep a night seems to be the standard — and heading to their teaching assignments. Here’s a link to their blogs.

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