Three bills to end social promotion of K-8 students were passed in 1998 - AB 1626, AB 1639 and SB 1370.
The bills do not address secondary school because the High School Exit Exam is expected to eliminate "social" graduation. Highlights include:
- School districts must establish a policy regarding the promotion and retention of students, as well as interventions to assist at-risk students.
- Each district's policy must define criteria for identifying pupils who should be retained or who are at risk of being retained. Second- and third-graders are to be judged mainly on reading. Older students are to be judged on reading, language arts and math. While the law uses certain grades as benchmarks for retention - second, third and fourth grades, before middle school and the end of middle school - nothing in the law prohibits retention of students in other grades. And nothing prohibits students from being retained more than once.
- Districts are allowed to use their own criteria for judging students, including STAR test results, other indicators of academic achievement designated by the district and report card grades. If a child is found to be performing below the district's minimum standard for promotion, the pupil has to be retained unless the pupil's regular classroom teacher specifies in writing that retention is not the appropriate intervention If a student has more than one teacher, district policy is supposed to specify which teacher is responsible for the decision.District policy is also supposed to define a teacher's role in student retention.
- Districts have to notify parents as soon as possible if a student is at risk of retention, and must provide opportunities for parents to confer with the teacher. Districts must also provide an appeals process.
- Teachers may recommend promotion to the next grade level contingent upon on a student's participation in an intervention or remediation program. The decision will be reevaluated upon completion of such a program. A teacher's evaluation must be discussed with the student's parent or guardian and the principal before a final determination is made.
The new law appropriated $75 million for mandatory summer school and $30 million to fund remedial instruction in grades 7-9. This included $94.1 million to fund enrollment growth and cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) for categorical programs. The category of summer school was later expanded to include supplemental instructional programs, including Saturday school, before- and after-school programs, and intersession for year-round students in grades 2-9. The law stipulates that interventions or supplementary instruction should not pull students away from core curriculum.
This year, the amount of money provided by the state for each hour of supplemental instruction was increased from $2.53 per hour to $3.53 per hour after a study determined more money was needed. And more money was allocated to districts in the form of block grants rather than categorical funding.
Districts are supposed to seek the active involvement of teachers and parents in the development and implementation of supplemental instructional programs.
The law does not set a deadline for school districts to enact social promotion legislation. Nor does it require the California Department of Education to monitor the effects of implementation. There is no uniform mandate as to how districts should carry out the law, and districts are interpreting it in widely different ways.
There are no consequences if schools don't stop social promotion.
The law gives more authority to teachers, who have often complained in the past that administrators passed students to the next grade level despite a teacher's recommendation that they be held back.
Nevertheless some administrators are still pressuring teachers to pass failing students - especially if parents want them promoted.
