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APRIL 2004

Grade Retention Policy Demands Private Solid Planning & Ample Funding
by Assemblyman Steven Sanders

There is a lot more to education policy than "acting tough" and spouting generalizations. How about focusing on exactly how we will actually achieve the academic improvement we seek for students, rather than just "spin" a complex education policy choice, mocking those who ask essential questions as sorry opponents of change?

It is troubling that any individual who either questioned the Mayor's plan to hold back failing students in the third grade, or who criticized (as did I) the Mayor's strong-arm tactics in having his way on this issue, was branded by hizzoner
as an "apologist for the status quo"—or worse. The Mayor should know better, even as some editorial boards stoked this misrepresentation of the views of many individuals dedicated to improving our schools.

I, for one, am opposed to automatically promoting students from one grade to the next if they have demonstrably failed to learn what is necessary in order to ascend the education ladder. But ending social promotion by mayoral fiat and actually having a sound educational plan to have the held back children succeed are entirely different matters. The Mayor forced through the policy change and is only now scrambling—with a group of unnamed advisors—to devise a teaching strategy to bring low-performing students up to speed, rather than leave them with the same learning blocks a year later.

And that's not the only problem. The Mayor's plan fails to diagnose those with learning disabilities; fails to identify those who simply don't test well, and fails to recognize those children for whom being left back might actually do more harm than good. It is completely unclear what instructional devices are planned that would lead to a leap in learning for a child who has been held back.

These matters are serious ones if a policy of grade retention on a large scale is to be fair and effective. Surely we do not want to hold third graders back for the purpose of having fourth grade scores jump through the roof—conveniently, some would say—in a Mayoral election year.

Addressing these issues and answering the questions raised by members of the Board of Education should have been undertaken even though it did not fit neatly into the Mayor's political timetable, or the next day's press cycle.

Finally, the Mayor's disdain and obstruction of the Board's legal responsibility to "consider and approve" systemic education policy issues is an absolute distortion of the School Governance Reform Law enacted just two years ago. The Mayor's contention that the Board's (or the "Panel on Educational Policy," the name he prefers) purpose is to merely rubber-stamp anything he wants is not what the Legislature intended.

The Mayor and the Chancellor would do well to listen more closely to the counsel of men and women who have considerable experience in education issues, which they do not, rather than stifle discussion and stamp out dissent. We need to put the public back in public education
and have key school policy decisions made in public view.

For a Mayor and a Chancellor with no background in public education to behave so dismissively towards those who question their views is a debasement of the democratic process and disservice to our students.#

Assemblyman Sanders is Chairman of the Education Committee. You can reach him by email at sanders@assembly.state.ny.us or by phone at 212.979.9696. His mailing address is 201 East 16th Street, New York, NY 10003.

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