Stop Repeating Grades and Stop Social Promotions By: Anthony Pellegrino, Part II

As discussed yesterday, we must create a new alternative for slow learners. Currently two courses of action are taken to remedy the slow learner’s failure to achieve expected level of study. The most common is social promotion. In essence the teacher tacitly is saying, ” You are incapable of doing the required work. You are wasting my precious time. I can’t tutor you. So move on. I don’t want you in my class again. Go bug the next teacher.” 8y the school condoning this, it becomes an accomplice resulting in graduates who are barely educated.

The second remedy is to retain underachievers in the same grade for a second year as though miraculously they will achieve the expected standards. It puzzles me how teachers and other educators think is a remedy. Without diagnosing the student’s difficulties, the child is condemned to repeat the same grade, with the same textbooks and usually with the same teacher. What an asinine solution. Is it any wonder that many students upon reaching sixteen either drop out, become juvenile delinquents or simply hate school for life?

Consider a unique, but perhaps a more effective, third method. Upon completion of third grade, have each child evaluated before promotion to fourth grade. Should the child not show the scholastic skills required of an entering fourth grader, place him in a non-graded classroom for a year where his academic shortcomings will be diagnosed and where he will be given intense tutorial aid to eliminate them. Then the next school year he can enter the fourth grade proud of his strengthened ability.

Repeat the same technique when a child completes sixth grade and is about to enter seventh grade. In the nongraded class, give him intense tutorial assistance The following year he will enter junior high ready as an achiever. Upon completion of the eighth grade, repeat the same screening before promoting the student to high school.

Finally when a student is about to graduate, he screen him and if found lacking acceptable academic skills, place him in a nongraded class and tutored for a maximum of one year in the hope of achieving them. When ready he will receive his diploma as a literate graduate.

The wonder of this method is that a child does not repeat the same material he failed in the previous year plus the burden of lowered selfesteem. Also social promotions become obsolete. By placing academically deficient students in nongraded classes temporarily ( a state of limbo), every student will truly have an equal opportunity for education. Fit the education to the child, not the child to the education.

It may require an extra year or two depending on the student before he graduates. But what an accomplishmentfor the school and for the child. What is an extra year for a life time of achievement! Is it more important that students graduate at a certain age even at the expense of graduating almost illiterate?

Break the “conveyor belt education factory system.” Let’s teach youth according to their needs. True, certain changes will have to be made but they are mainly attitudinal towards a revolutionary idea.

Parents, you are the key to making this happy. Talk over this concept in your PTA meetings, discuss it with the principal of your child’s school. Don’t accept “traditional” ideas. This is a new millennium. It is the age of massive technology and instant knowledge. Old methods must be reexamined and cast aside if they don’t fit anymore.

Contact any of the BOE members or Dr.. Inos, COE of PSS. and express your sentiments. What do you think? Should we try it?