From the June 11th NEGP weekly:
-> *2   CHICAGO STUDENT BLUES:  THE END OF SOCIAL PROMOTION
->    Living up to his promise, Chicago school chief Paul Vallas
-> required the city's public schools to end social promotion,
-> including holding back eighth graders poised to enter high school
-> (Johnson, N.Y. TIMES, 6/6).  "Everybody is passing tougher
-> standards, but Chicago is actually holding students to them,"
-> said Kathy Christie, a spokeswoman for the Education Commission of
-> the States.  "They're a little ahead of the game.  We're going to be
-> seeing a lot of this around the country in the next year or two."
->    According to the paper, about 25% of eighth-grade students
-> were informed this week that they would not graduate with their
-> classmates.  The students would have to remain in elementary
-> school unless they attend summer school and pass a standardized test.
-> Defending his program, Vallas queried:  "What's wrong with having
-> children spend another year or two in elementary school? What's wrong
-> with taking five or six years to get through high
-> school, if that's what it takes to get them prepared?  Why force all
-> kids through school on the same schedule?"
->    The TIMES reports that to pass eighth grade last year,
-> students must attain a score of 7.0, the standard for a beginning
-> seventh grader on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.  This year's
-> minimum score is higher and summer school enrollment is expected to
-> swell, writes the paper.
->    Students were warned at the start of this school year of the
-> consequences of performing below par.  Still, many students who were
-> informed that they would not graduate from grade school
-> became distraught.  One school formed "mini-crisis teams"
-> comprised of teachers and counselors who assured the students
-> that they still had the opportunity to move on to high school.
->    Vallas has brought a "toughened, back-to-basics approach" to
-> teaching and governing the Chicago public schools, notes the
-> paper.  In his second year as chief executive officer, Vallas
-> already has put more than 100 schools on academic probation and
-> removed more than a dozen principals from their posts.  Student test
-> scores indicate that Vallas' get-tough philosophy works:
-> "of the 473 elementary school, 393 had better math scores this
-> year than last year, and 271 had better reading scores.
-> Improvement in scores was also recorded at the vast majority of
-> schools that had been placed on probation a year earlier,"
-> reports the paper.
->    Social promotion is a bane to Vallas, who called it
-> "educational malpractice."  Teachers have been supportive of
-> Vallas' measures, including the end of social promotion.  "One of the
-> most difficult things for a teacher is to motivate students to take
-> the material seriously," said Matt Gandal, assistant
-> director for education at the American Federation of Teachers.
-> Students are pretty smart at knowing what they have to work hard at,
-> and what they don't.  The very real possibility that a
-> student might be held back, that gives the teaches much more
-> leverage in the classroom."
->    The TIMES notes that N.Y. public schools automatically
-> promote students from eighth grade to ninth once they turn 16
-> years-of-age.  However, that policy is under review by Schools
-> Chancellor Rudy Crew.
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