Every year they said they were going to hold me back, but it was never true," says 15-year-old Veronica Cantu. She didn't think they were serious.
"This year it was true."
Bill Konrad teaches a 6.5-7.5 combination class at Oak Hill Middle School in Clearlake where students like Ryan Gove are getting credit for advancing half a grade level.
When she was told that being retained in the eighth grade was a possibility, she says she "didn't really care that much." By the end of the year, when she realized her friends were going to high school and she wasn't, it was too late. "I tried really hard at the end of the year, but it wasn't enough."
Cantu is one of nearly 300 Palm Springs students attending the Ramon Academy, a school created just for students who were not promoted to high school.
Throughout the state, students like Cantu are learning that schools mean business. Schools have always had the right to hold students back, but most did not, citing concerns that retention might increase a student's chances of dropping out. But now California has outlawed social promotion.
Already burdened with overcrowded classrooms, a teacher shortage and new accountability requirements, the state is only beginning to feel the impact of the mandate.
"I don't think the state realizes what an impact this is going to have on finances and facilities. We are going to be paying for an extra year of schooling for many of these students," says Pam Kingsley, a member of the Santa Barbara Teachers Association and chair of CTA's Student Retention Workgroup.
While the state has provided money to fund intervention programs for students at risk of retention - recently upped to $3.53 per hour of supplemental instruction per student - it is not always enough. Some educators maintain that their district's general fund and other programs are being robbed to make up the difference.
There are no statistics on how many students have been retained or targeted for retention since the law does not require the state to keep track. However, many school districts retained large numbers of students last year and have started intervention programs like mandatory summer school, Saturday school, intersession school (for year-round students), and before- and after-school tutoring programs. Many other districts are just now starting to develop policies on retention and intervention.
Districts are allowed to develop their own policies for carrying out the law, as well as their own criteria for determining who should be retained. How individual school districts are handling retention is basically all over the map, says Lily Tsuda, a retention consultant for the state Department of Education. "The law allows a lot of leeway."
Meanwhile, uncertainty reigns. The Sacramento City Unified School District, for example, has developed a policy to retain students, but no real interventions are in place yet, says Sacramento City Teachers Association President Tom Rogers. "There is a lot of confusion here. Nothing has been solidly defined by the district, and nobody knows what to do. I'm afraid that if we do have widespread retention next year, we may not have the capacity to deal with it."
"We are all in a quandary as to how to implement this," says Kingsley in Santa Barbara.
Her district has just this year developed a retention policy and identified students at risk for retention. She isn't sure whether her elementary school students are taking the threat seriously. "Last year, we didn't retain any children as a district. This year, it's hard to say whether children at risk for retention are trying harder. They are more concerned with finishing their work by recess. Some do take it seriously, but for others it's too abstract a notion."
When parents are informed that their children are at risk for retention, the results are mixed. Many parents of Kingsley's students routinely take their children out of school for weeks at a time to visit Mexico. When told that long absences could increase their children's chances of retention, "They said, We have to go to Mexico, so go ahead and retain them.'" It worries her that many parents said the same thing. "We don't want children growing mustaches in fourth grade."
Still, the "F" word (flunk) is back, and many districts are cracking down.
One of the most dramatic examples is Oak View Elementary School in Huntington Beach, which held back a third of its student body, or 249 students last year.
- In Orange County, approximately 5,000 students returned to the same grade this year - a much higher number than ever before.
- In Los Angeles Unified, more than 6,000 second-graders and 700 eighth-graders are repeating a grade this year.
- In Long Beach, 789 students were retained in grades 1 through 5 last year, 381 in third grade alone - close to double the previous year's number. In addition, approximately 243 eighth-graders were retained in a special academy, a decline from the prior year.
- In Elk Grove Unified, 743 K-8 students were held back last year, compared to 348 the year before.
- In the North Sacramento School District, 150 students are repeating a grade this year, compared to only a few students the previous year.
- In the San Diego Unified School District, plans are to hold back 5 percent of first-graders (600 students) and 10-17 percent of sixth- and seventh-graders (1,000-1,700 students), as well as to enroll 17 percent of ninth-graders (1,600 students) in three-hour literacy classes next year. Teachers are demanding to bargain the terms of the district's "Blueprint for Student Success" since the district plans to cut programs and jobs to fund its intervention program.
- In Oakland Unified, 3,752 students were retained last year. The threat there is that next year will be "the year" for really cracking down.
Most agree that simply making a child repeat a grade isn't the optimum situation for learning. If a child didn't "get it" or try hard the first time, he or she probably won't "get it" or be motivated the second time around.
Seeing the futility in doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results, many school districts are trying something new.
Instead of putting sixth-graders back in the same classrooms where they floundered the previous year, San Juan Unified is putting them into special "pre-seventh-grade" classes. These students complete middle school on the three-year plan rather than the traditional two-year timeframe. There is also a pre-ninth-grade class.
The "pre-classes" are referred to as intervention classes rather than retention classes. They offer a smaller class size, before- and after-school tutoring and Saturday school.
Participating students do not take electives, science or social studies. "We give them two periods of basic math a day, and have a goal of getting them into Algebra 1-A," says Glenda Cox, a member of the San Juan Teachers Association (SJTA), who teaches pre-seventh-grade classes at Sylvan Middle School. In addition, students get three periods of English that focus on reading and writing.
"At the rate we're going, I definitely think most will be ready for seventh grade next year," she says. "Some of them have made huge strides in math. Some are getting A's and B's for the first time, and are feeling pretty good about their success."
Initially, says Cox, there was some parental unhappiness with the program. "But once we explained what we were trying to achieve before moving them on, the parents seemed satisfied and got behind the program."
A similar program at Clearlake puts retention students in "half" classes. Rather than repeating middle-school grades, retention students are put in grades 6.5, 7.5 and 8.5. The program gives students a second chance, say teachers, and allows students to feel as though they have advanced at least half a grade.
"We haven't seen students trying harder this year," says Tom Kenney, a social studies teacher at Oak Hill Middle School in Clearlake. "Some students see it as a badge of honor, like going to 'juvie' [juvenile hall]. Then they realize they want to graduate with their friends and take elective classes." By the time that realization hits, says Kenney, it can be too little too late.
In La Habra, retained students are put in alternative learning classes with at-risk students. The fifth-grade alternative learning class, for example, combines retained fifth-graders with at-risk fourth-graders.
"It is a wake-up call and an eye-opener for a lot of students," says Orange County Service Center Chair Jim Rogers, who teaches in the La Habra City School District. "Many of them seem to have buckled down now. Before, students assumed they would just keep on going to the next grade level no matter what."
Long Beach, which outlawed social promotion in 1997 and opened a special "academy" for eighth-grade retention students, now targets third- and fifth-graders for retention as well. Next year, first-graders will be added. Students with two or more F's are considered candidates for retention.
While eighth-grade retainees are kept isolated at the academy, other retainees attend classes with younger at-risk students. For example, fifth-grade retainees are put in a special literacy class with at-risk fourth- and fifth-grade students.
Because younger students are being targeted for early intervention, the number of eighth-graders needing to be retained is dropping. Approximately 350 eighth-graders were held back in 1997; this year just 243 were sent to the academy. Teachers expect the decline to continue.
Cliff Kusaba, president of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, believes his district's retention policy serves as a motivator for eighth-graders. "I taught eighth grade and, when this started, I got more work out of my students. More of them kept up with their schoolwork."
In Los Angeles, large numbers of second- and eighth-grade students who were held back were put in special retention classes with smaller class sizes and intensive academic programs this year.
"It was very expensive," says Becki Robinson, elementary vice president of United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA). "Not only were we paying for 10-to-1 class-size ratios, but we also had to buy specialized equipment for second grade and special computer programs for eighth-grade reading programs. It cost as much as $25,000 to set up a retention classroom."
"I believe that the second-grade retention classes worked out much better than teachers had hoped," says Robinson.
The eighth-grade retention classes, however, were less successful, says UTLA Secondary Vice President Bev Cook.
"These kids, unlike the second-graders, had nine years of bad habits and they were angry," says Cook. "For years, they had been passed along, strictly based on their age."
The students, housed on middle-school campuses, spent four hours a day in special retention classes where they focused on reading, language arts and study skills. Younger at-risk students were put in the same classes.
Retainees who had failed math were sent back to the same mainstream math classes they had failed the year before. Those who had passed math the year before were put in mainstream, higher-level math classes.
Tammie Gillespie at Oak View Elementary in Huntington Beach uses a game to help kindergartners with math.
"We wanted an isolated program for eighth-graders where we could work with them all day long, and not have them be part of the mainstream student population," explains Cook. "But that didn't happen, and they felt like failures. It became a 'sweathog' situation where bad behaviors continued," she says, referring to the "Welcome Back Kotter" television series that glorified delinquents known as sweathogs. "They caused problems in their classes with mainstream students. They became a bad influence on the younger kids. In a lot of schools they began to roam the campus like gangs."
Exacerbating the problem, says Cook, were an insufficient number of counselors to work with retained eighth-graders, teachers inadequately trained to deal with such students, and not enough teachers for study skills classes.
While many teachers were successful, Cook adds, "we have major problems to work out for this to be a success next year."
Districts that have completely isolated retention students report better results. The newly opened Ramon Academy in Palm Springs is located on a high school campus, but the 300 eighth-graders do not mix with the general population. The school day is an hour longer and the school year is six weeks longer than the regular high school. Math classes are 75 minutes long. English classes have a smaller student-to-teacher ratio (20-to-1).
"It's a very intensive and structured program that focuses on the basics," says Genny Smith, president of the Palm Springs Teachers Association (PSTA). "At the semester break, if they have made sufficient progress, they can transition into ninth grade."
In January, 26 students transitioned into the ninth grade after only one semester. They will be given the opportunity to transition into 10th grade in June. Those who do so will have to make up some of the freshman classes they missed while in the academy, and will have to attend summer school every year to graduate with their class.
"Statistically, these kids have made a lot of growth, which is very encouraging to us," says Lori Mahoney, a PSTA member who teaches math and reading at Ramon Academy. "I love teaching here and watching the kids succeed."
At first, things started off on a somewhat rocky basis, says Mahoney. "Students were not happy to be here. They felt that someone was doing something bad to them and that it was not their fault they had been retained. The staff tried to be really supportive and understanding. It took about a month for the kids to understand that we were trying to help them. Kids began to realize that in the past, they had made choices not to do their schoolwork or attend class. Now they realize they have the choice to be successful."
Veronica Cantu is one of the students who have chosen success over failure. If all goes according to plan, she will transition into high school as a sophomore in June.
"When I first came here, I thought I was nothing," she says. "I didn't think the teachers were going to help me. But I have learned a lot of new things and am doing well in my classes. Here, I receive more help from teachers because my classes are small. Before coming here, I never liked math, because I didn't 'get' it. Now I get it and actually like it. Math was my worst subject and now it's my favorite."
She feels as if she has been given a second chance. "I have been given a chance to work harder so I can move on. When I first came here, my parents were angry. But now they are proud of how much I have improved."
