Beyond implementing these principles, more mundane steps must be taken as well. As two former state education commissioners, Thomas Boysen and Thomas Sobol, wrote recently in Education Week , teachers must be afforded an opportunity to become familiar with new instructional material and acquire new techniques. Besides, previous experience with ending social promotions should give those who mindlessly endorse it pause. To begin with, school districts already refuse to promote thousands of students. The jury is still out on whether this recent wave of tough retention rules actually work.
Previous experience provides scant cause for optimism.
In the early 1980s, New York City tried ending social promotions. The school system hired 1100 more teachers, equipped them with special training and placed them with the failing pupils in smaller classes. The well-intentioned effort flunked. Within a few years, the students who'd been held back were no better off academically than the low achievers in previous years who were allowed to pass to the next grade. Even more troubling, the dropout rate for detainees was much higher than that of similar students who didn't stay back.