Boyle Heights School in Eye of Social Promotion Storm

If the looming ban on social promotion is an educational earthquake, then Dena Elementary School in Boyle Heights is at the epicenter.

Here, 70% of the 950 K-5 students were still learning in Spanish this fall. If the Stanford 9 educational test, which is given in English, is chosen as the most significant gatekeeper, at least half--if not all--of those children would not qualify for the next grade, said Principal Karen Robertson.

At a time when the district is still moving out of bilingual education, educators fear that language skills will play a decisive role in whether students are promoted at the many Los Angeles city schools like Dena, where all but a few students are Spanish speakers. Educators at Dena are scrambling to expand intervention programs--whether after-school or during vacation--to better prepare students. They are hoping that administrators adopt a fair method of promoting children that does not penalize students for their work-in-progress English if they excel in math and Spanish-language reading.

However it plays out, “it is probably going to be a revolution,” said Carolyn Haselkorn, Dena’s assistant principal. “It is not going to be business as usual.”

Los Angeles schools Supt. Ruben Zacarias said this week that the nation’s second largest school district will end social promotion--the practice of moving youngsters to the next grade, whether or not they are ready. Tens of thousands of students could be held back a grade unless significant academic progress is made by the June 2000 deadline set by Zacarias.

In addition to the Stanford 9 test, teachers will decide which students advance based on classroom work, according to draft guidelines of the proposal. But it is unclear how much weight the district will give to Stanford 9 test scores in determining which students pass.

At Dena, Robertson worries about the change. Few of her students are fluent in English and most face a host of problems, which begin with poverty. The school is a fragile zone of calm between two warring gangs. On two days last week, gunfire echoed through the streets, and both times an alarm signaled students and teachers to hit the floor.

“Realistically, 70% cannot be held back,” Robertson said. “They’ve only been in English six months.”

Such concerns trickle down to the classrooms, even among those who support the measure’s goals.

“In the past I’ve had students who couldn’t read, and I’ve been forced to promote them, and they should not have been promoted,” said Patricia Seki, a fifth-grade teacher at Dena.

She worries that the measure could turn into a stealth English test. She believes that most of her 24 students have a grasp of reading and other skills--albeit, in Spanish--that would qualify them for the sixth grade. But only half would pass the Stanford 9 at their level, she said.

“This class loves learning and reading,” Seki said.

Cynthia Gomez, a second-grade teacher, shares the same mixed feelings while she has a typical conversation with a student, in which she speaks English and he repeatedly answers in Spanish.

“I tend to agree some social promotion is not good,” she said. “We go back and forth between social promotion being good for self-esteem, but how good can your self-esteem be if you can’t keep up with the class?”

Gomez believes that her class has learned far more this year than it would be able to demonstrate on the Stanford 9, and she hopes that other tools--such as mastery of arithmetic and reading--are given greater weight in assessing their performance.

Still, she said, “I feel strongly that for things to change, drastic measures have to be taken. Somebody will always end up in the middle, and in this case it’s the children. Guess who’s going to take the burden again? Our low-income Spanish speakers.”

Assistant Principal Haselkorn, who does not believe that holding children back helps them, is highly optimistic that intensive intervention programs will prepare students by the time the ban is adopted. She believes that only a few children will be held back under the new guidelines.

The school, which operates year-round, already has remedial sessions. But under the measure, they would become mandatory.

There also is a before- and after-school learning program for latchkey children, which could be expanded. Teachers are already being given additional training, said Haselkorn, who believes that the programs will successfully move most children forward.

“Research shows that retention never works, because retention does not solve the learning problems that are holding kids back,” she said. “If students are not meeting grade level, there will be intervention. Intervention should not begin at the end of the year, when students are already failing.”

Removing Obstacles

The new push is at the top of a long list of additional duties that educators at the school perform to remove obstacles to student performance.

Before Christmas, a little boy chronically cried and shivered in class. It turned out that his family did not have blankets. So the school bought them some, along with pajamas and proper clothes for the boy.

Another child could not follow what was being written on the blackboard. Her mother finally volunteered that the girl needed eyeglasses, and the school made sure she got them.

“The parents are trying to make ends meet and put food on the table,” Haselkorn said. “The children have many obstacles to face in their daily lives.”

But the most involved parents at the school know that a solid education is the best way for their children to transcend their lot in life.

Juana Contreras, who has a daughter in junior college and a son at UCLA, applauds a ban on social promotion at Dena--even if it held back her son, Jose, who is a fourth-grader there.

“If he is not properly prepared, it would be better to hold him back,” said Contreras, who is from Chihuahua. “A lot of times students are not getting the material and they just keep passing them. They get to high school knowing nothing.

“In Mexico, if a kid doesn’t pass, they make him repeat the grade,” she said.

Engracia Enriquez, who has six daughters in the Los Angeles Unified School District--including one at Dena--disagrees.

“I think they should put them in additional intensive learning classes but keep them with their grade,” she said. “Holding them back, putting them with younger kids, could humiliate them and cause them to become aggressive and angry with other kids and their parents.

“The real answer is for parents to watch less television and make time every day to go over their kids’ homework with them, no matter how busy they are,” she said.

If there is apprehension about the move to retain children, some educators are heartened at the growing momentum of the push to improve the quality of education.

“It’s a very exciting time to be in education,” said Principal Robinson. “The public is supportive financially, and they are very interested in what we’re doing.”