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Clinton's dumbest education idea
When President Clinton vowed in his State of the Union address to "end social promotion" -- passing schoolchildren to the next grade regardless of their achievement -- he bravely declared himself opposed to a concept that has absolutely no supporters. "Social promotion" is a concept much like "welfare as we know it." Nobody likes it, nobody wants to defend it and the president's promise to end it places him squarely on the side of the angels -- and the voters, according to pollsters. Exactly where Clinton likes to be. So why are former Clinton supporters in the education community furious at the president's promise? "Because he knows better," says Kati Haycock of the Education Trust, which advocates to improve education for poor children. "When he was governor he knew education systems as thoroughly as anyone. He's just pandering." Nobody supports social promotion, Haycock notes, but the likely alternative -- forcing millions of students to repeat a grade in school -- is worse. It's rare that educational research is unanimous about anything, but on the issue of retention, it's close. There is near consensus among scholars and researchers that retention doesn't help, and often hurts, the children who repeat a grade. Chicago's attempt to end social promotion, which Clinton cited approvingly in his State of the Union address, is actually an expensive, undocumented experiment that, despite $100 million annually for remedial programs, has resulted in at least 24,000 students being left back over the last two years. Several states and cities have already ended social promotion and vastly increased retention rates, with dubious results. Despite that research and experience, ending social promotion has become the cure-all for the nation's education ills. The goal unites a broad spectrum of politicians and social critics who normally disagree. Conservative writer Charles Murray, whose 1984 book "Losing Ground" blamed permissive 1960s policies for causing the 1980s urban underclass, linked social promotion with welfare as an example of a liberal practice that actually hurt those it was intended to help. "A student who did not want to learn was much freer not to learn," Murray wrote, and faced "no credible sanctions for not learning." But Sandra Feldman of the American Federation of Teachers -- a group Murray likes no better than welfare-rights advocates -- also blasts social promotion. In her first major speech to the National Press Club after taking office, she blamed the practice of "sending students on to the next grade even though they weren't really ready" for the epidemic of students leaving high school without basic skills. The AFT has come out against social promotion, arguing that if students don't meet basic standards, they should be retained. And of course, politicians to Clinton's right have tried to make ending social promotion their cause. Just before he left office last month, former California Gov. Pete Wilson signed two bills to end social promotion in California -- but they passed the state's Democrat-controlled Legislature unanimously, a measure of the notion's bipartisan popularity. Texas Gov. George W. Bush is a longtime foe of social promotion, but significantly, the plan passed by the Texas Legislature sets tough new standards for promotion, yet allows teachers and parents leeway to avoid leaving students back if they'd be harmed by it. How did ending social promotion become the education reform flavor of the week? "It's part of the same 'get tough' mentality you see on crime, on welfare," says Ernest House, a University of Colorado education professor who has studied the issue closely. "But on school kids, it just doesn't work." N E X T+P A G E+| A hundred years of controversy |
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