The extra year of instruction helps to end the practice of social promotion, in which students are allowed to move to the next grade whether they are prepared or not. In Long Beach, the policy helped reduce the number of eighth graders failing multiple subjects to 332 students, down 55 percent over two years. Ending social promotion is now key to reform efforts nationwide. The policy communicates clearly to students that they can no longer drift through school. They must perform to acceptable levels, and the school system must help them do so.
Teachers are learners, too.
One of the best ways to describe standards-based teaching is to compare it to the classroom experience that most of us are familiar with. Using a textbook as the main guide, a teacher plows through the school year, chapter by chapter, with success often measured by how far the class progresses through the book. Standards-based teachers usually don't start with a textbook. Instead, they start with the standards - what the children should know. The textbook becomes just one of many sources that the teacher uses to help students reach the standard.