The Mayor’s announcement on July 18 that he will now hold back 7th graders as well as 3rd and 5th graders based on their standardized test scores. will likely have destructive consequences for these students. Unfortunately the Mayor has chosen a good political sound bite over the future of our children. Our city will now have the most draconian retention policies in the nation.         

                           

A year and a half ago, Class Size Matters and Advocates for Children released a letter, signed by over one hundred academic experts who opposed the Mayor’s 3rd grade retention proposal, based on over 50 years of research showing that retention hurts rather than helps student achievement and leads to much higher drop out rates. One major study shows that students held back before the 8th grade increased the likelihood of their eventually dropping out by more than 200%. Furthermore, "students who were held back before the 8th grade were more than four times as likely as students who were not held back to not complete high school or receive a GED" six years later. [Russell W. Rumberger and K.A. Larson, Student Mobility and the Increased Risk of High School Dropout, American Journal of Education, November 1998.]

The signers of the expert letter opposing the Mayor’s retention policy included Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, former Board of Education head of testing Robert Tobias, and Dr. Ernest House, who undertook the independent evaluation of New York City’s failed retention program in the 1980’s.  Other signers included four past presidents of the American Education Research Association, Professor Robert Hauser, the chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Appropriate Use of Educational Testing, and several members of the Board on Testing and Assessment of the National Research Council.

Indeed, the professional consensus is so overwhelming about the policy’s negative effects that its use amounts to educational malpractice, according to Shane Jimerson, a dean at the University of California at Santa Barbara.  Even Chicago has considerably backed off from the use of grade retention, based on the fact that it has led to worse outcomes for its students.  The Mayor’s 3rd grade retention proposal could never have passed originally if he hadn’t first fired two of his own appointees on the Panel on Educational Policy.

If Mayor Bloomberg really wanted to ensure our children’s success, he would provide them with more help and guidance in the form of smaller classes.  Instead, since 2000, class sizes have risen in the 7th and 8th grades. [Source: IBO, Dept. of Education C-Form Register Files for 2000-2004.] Our middle school students desperately need more attention from their teachers, but are often crammed into classes of 30 or more. 

In suburban schools and in the private schools where the Mayor and Chancellor sent their own children, such a situation would never be tolerated. There, grade retention policies based on standardized tests are unknown. Instead, these schools provide students with the help they need in the form of smaller classes and more individual attention.  New York public schools already have the lowest graduation rates for black and Hispanic students in the nation.  We don’t need to institute a policy that will cause these abysmal rates to fall even lower.

For the expert letter against the Mayor's grade retention proposal, first released in February of 2004, click here.  

For the press release with more quotes from experts, click here.

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