Only half of Sonoma Valley’s students can read, write and reason at their own grade level. Half.
By federal mandate, we have had consistent testing for almost a decade, and the results are available for review through the state’s Web site, cde.ca.gov. The Obama administration is a leading proponent of data-driven decisions for improving education, and the data, for our local students, are not pretty.
We suggest one simple step to solve the problem: stop promoting the kids who can’t do grade-level work.
This practice of social promotion became popular in the ‘60s, when the driving concern was the “self-esteem” of the students. It was less important, according to the advocates, that students acquire the skills and knowledge to compete than it was that students feel good about themselves. (It makes us wonder what sort of emotional problems plagued the adults, that they thought actual learning was an optional part of going to school – “Just do the time, and move right along.”)
This practice places burdens on the whole public education system, because students moving from one grade to the next exhibit a great range of learning readiness, from remedial to advanced. Since “tracking” is unpopular, that means the material at every grade has had be “dumbed down” to target the middle range. The socially promoted students would have to catch up on what they’d failed to learn the prior year, in order to progress with the new material, thus creating a perpetual cycle of failure for many students.
With the one policy change we (and others) propose, this cycle can be broken. Promoted from one grade to the next would be only those students who are proficient in the material at their grade level and who are ready to move on and tackle the new material in the new grade. Then the system is filled, at each grade level, with students ready to learn the material at that grade.
Can it really be this simple? In large part, yes. The logic is certainly sound. What it requires is merely, but importantly, a conviction by everyone involved in our schools that the students can learn the material and an explicit, consistent expectation that they will achieve grade-level proficiency before they are promoted.
This question of belief was raised out loud at the recent school board retreat, and it’s a valid one. Few have expressed it better than Dalton Sherman, a 10-year-old from Dallas who a year ago addressed some 20,000 Dallas teachers ready to begin the new school year. Watch him on YouTube, if you like. It’s a good investment of eight minutes to hear this young boy preach the good news that belief in students’ ability to succeed is the essential element in achieving that success.
This is particularly true for the SED students, who come from families considered “socially-economically disadvantaged.” In Sonoma, that group includes a large proportion of our Latino students, and only one in three or four is at grade level. What will the future hold for the other two out of three, or the other three out of four? Will they have hope? Will they believe that they can compete successfully in business or in a profession? Can they even go to college and try? The reality is often, “No, they can’t,” because they haven’t acquired the necessary academic tools.
Do we, as a community, believe in those students? We’d like to think that everyone in our school system does, but then why are students who cannot do the work at one grade level simply moved on to the next? The evidence seems clear that this is hurting students’ chances for later success.
Instilling the positive message that proficiency in grade level work is expected wouldn’t require more money; it simply requires the belief that the students can succeed and the willingness to hold them and our schools accountable. In our view, it’s a shame when we don’t.
