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When Social Promotion Gives a Pass to Instructional Failure

Social Promotion: Scenes from School

It’s August, and twenty one administrators and counselors sit in a conference room, poring over the files of thirty one 9th graders who do not have enough credits to graduate. Most of the students have a history of academic non-compliance. Ten to fifteen of them enrolled in summer school to make up the credits, but failed to do the work or didn’t attend. We see their dismal records in front of us. A junior high counselor argues against keeping them back: some are just too big; others have intimidated their teachers. A junior high assistant principal offers his own variant of an academic “Hail Mary pass”: Perhaps, he suggests, these students will turn over a new leaf when they get to high school? It doesn’t seem like a sure bet to a high school counselor. Sending students like these to high school, she says, just hasn’t worked out. Four hours pass. The group has dead-ended: all twenty one will be socially promoted to the tenth grade.

Social Promotion: Scenes from School

A 7th grade teacher awards a failing student a “D” grade so that he won’t have him in class next time around. For a variety of reasons–not all his own fault–the student is stubborn, under-skilled, hostile to instruction, and continually gravitating towards–or creating–classroom distractions. The 7th grader goes to 8th grade, and the same thing occurs–not only here but at 9th grade as well. At last, the student enters 10th grade with the skills, attitudes, respect for authority and work habits of an underperforming, angry 5th grader. There is little possibility that the10th grade curriculum will be a match for this student’s interests or skills.

Social Promotion: Scenes from School

A teacher stands with his back to the class, working out problems on the whiteboard. He flings out questions, directed at no one in particular. The arms fly, zigzagging through triangles, rectangles and squares. The more capable students, bunched in the front, socialize loudly, listen to their ipods, and randomly blurt brief–but correct–answers to the teacher’s questions. The off task noise is such that the teacher cannot be heard at the back of the room where I am seated for an observation. I tap the shoulder of a female student who sits in front of me. She hasn’t been taking notes. I ask her if the teacher’s demonstration is clear. She says she hasn’t understood a thing for five or six days now. Last quarter, she received a “D.” “Have you ever been asked a question or called upon to explain a procedure in class?” The answer is no. The teacher continues to work problems out on the board, demonstrating his skill and deep mathematical knowledge by rapid firing challenging questions that are directed at no one. In a post-observation conference, the teacher expresses his dissatisfaction that 40-50% of his students will fail this class. His colleagues regard him as a master practitioner.

Social Promotion: Scenes from School

A teacher shouts for the class to pay attention as he explains a group activity. During the first ten minutes of class he has made fifteen to twenty similar requests–sometimes punctuated with disciplinary threats to offending students. The threats never come to fruition. At this most recent demand for silence, one student turns to look at him while the others continue socializing, but at reduced volume. Satisfied, the teacher now plunges ahead with the explanation. Fifteen seconds after he begins, this single student turns away to laugh about something with her friend. Minutes later–an eternity in this classroom– the teacher concludes the set-up. He asks no one in particular: “Are there any questions?” Naturally there are none. His exasperation builds as he spends the rest of the period moving from table to table, re-explaining the assignment.

Ask any teacher whether social promotion works and you will receive a straightforward answer: It doesn’t.

And it doesn’t take university level research to demonstrate that kids who are reluctant, frustrated or angry about schooling will begin to fall behind in the early grades–and that without dramatic transformation of their classroom experiences, they will be unable to “turn it around” when they arrive at the next grade level as well.

Private schools can be selective about which students they accept, but public schools rightly welcome all who arrive–regardless of their background and level of preparedness.

Have public schools created strategies that meet these students where they are and then take them to where they need to be?

According to many educators, the challenges of doing so may be insuperable, thanks to economic or cultural factors which are beyond a teacher’s ability to control: Poverty is blamed, family cultures are blamed, racism is blamed, privatization and billionaires are blamed, standardized testing is blamed, funding inequalities are blamed, and even calls for measurable teacher accountability are blamed.

Health issues–fetal alcohol, for example– may seriously disadvantage some students before they arrive at school. Injuries like this can be deeply impairing, and are in a unique class by themselves. But the other causes: poverty, inadequate funding, standardized testing, even dysfunctional family culture–are these congenital and absolutely impairing?

When a student experiences racism, does that necessarily render her unteachable? Do time consuming standardized testing obligations render teachers incapable of creating moments of discovery and authentic learning within the classroom?  Do school funding inequalities mean that basic skills cannot be taught–or learned in even the poorest of schools?  Does it mean that curiosity and a critical temperament of poor students cannot be modeled and successfully coached?

Something has to cause student failure, and the reliance upon external, unmanageable macro causes provides educators with some relief. The “other” is responsible; and identification of the “other” as the cause of failure tidily excludes instructional practices from scrutiny–takes them off the table, removes them from the discussion as to why students fail.

Yet classroom instructional practices are the very areas, the only areas, which educators can presume to address, examine and amend.

Why is it that school teachers and their advocates consistently minimize the importance of this key contributor to the performance issues within America’s public schools?

Efforts to deflect the focus from classroom practices are understandable–and unprofessional. Together, the scapegoats clamor to prevent examination of the dynamics of teaching and learning within classrooms themselves.

All professions have their weak practitioners. We have all experienced the physician who does not care, or who accidentally jams the cortisone shot directly into a nerve, or who misses an obvious diagnosis. We know that some police officers are more suited for military missions than for community work. We have heard investment advisers tell us once that Costco was a fad, or that Starbucks had no future because the company did not own the sources for its coffee beans.

It’s deflating to come to the realization that our professions are full of “experts,” but that not all of them are expert.

When it comes to schools, the fact is that there are more than a few teachers who are not highly qualified in their content areas, or not deeply committed to creating engaging learning experiences for their students.

Whether this is a failure of spirit on their part, or attributable to the poor quality of many teacher preparation programs is an open question. But this much is clear: effective instructional practices and inspired teachers can do more to address the Yin/Yang of student failure and resultant social promotion than any external factor.

Of course there are amazing, high quality teachers in our schools, and each of us remembers those few who excited us about learning. I have worked alongside teachers like these, and have observed them succeed in less than optimal school settings. They are heroes who pull the rabbit out of the hat on a daily basis–bringing experiences of light and meaning to students who are the verge of discovering the joy of learning.

Because of their passion, their skill, they have ignited the fires; they have transformed disinterested students into knowledge seekers. It’s a miracle, and it happens for teachers like these every day.

But teachers like these are rare.

We also remember the time-servers in the profession who turned learning into a multiple choice test, turned rigor into “rigor mortis”, who sat behind their computers composing emails to friends while students goofed off, or who relied upon dittoes and handouts as the meat and potatoes of their instructional inspiration.

These were–and still are–the unwitting motivators for the charter school movement.

And the number of teachers operating at this level is substantial.

In retrospect we begin to think that these teachers are the kind who gravitated to this line of work because after all, teaching was relatively easy to get into–though it can be a punishing occupation once you get there.

And once the contract has been signed, teachers like these soon enjoy a level of job security that far exceeds that enjoyed by employees in the rest of the working world.

Some teacher unions make honest evaluation of teacher performance a difficult task. Most school board members have probably never been teachers, and may not have a mental model for what teaching all students might begin to look like. Some administrators may have been promoted because they are insiders who possess social skills or the ability to avoid controversy–not necessarily because they have credible instructional expertise. And most tragic: authentic, high quality teacher mentoring and remediation programs are nearly non-existent.

As a result, the system, like most struggling bureaucracies, spirals downward toward doing the easy thing, the convenient thing, the most comfortable thing. Maintaining operations, preserving appearances…

…And prescribing social promotion for students who fail–because the adults in charge have been unable to figure out what else they can do.

Not only does the practice harm students whose resentment and frustration deepen year after year. It also ferries this discontent to future classrooms, making it ever more challenging for next-level teachers to create a learning environment where shared discovery and constructive student participation are the norm.

These consequences manifest themselves most tragically at the secondary level.

In some classrooms more than a few students demonstrate every day that they have not been consistently guided by their previous teachers to appreciate how an effective classroom can be a source of inspiration for them. Not enough of their previous experiences have taught them that discovery is a value, or that mildly disruptive behaviors don’t pencil out because they will be addressed and effectively remedied.

And if one rogue teacher attempts to address this problem in the conduct of her own classroom, that work is quickly undone as students journey to the rest of their scheduled classes where teacher fecklessness and off-task behaviors may predominate.

Students, teachers, parents and school cultures across the country have all been knee-capped by this inconsistency.

It is true that some students may never have their needs met by regular public schools. But we also know that the multitude of our public school students are balanced enough to be curious about new things, as well as to become mentally and socially involved. They’re already doing that in their private lives.

They are not impaired. Some of them may be ignorant, resistant, rude, but they are all teachable.

Yet a significant number of these students leave their constructive talents at the door when they enter America’s classroom–bringing a bewildering array of mildly disruptive behaviors which they use to diminish the quality of the learning experience both for themselves and those around them.

I have seen it again and again: two such students, whether in elementary or secondary grades, can permanently undermine the classroom atmosphere of a poorly trained teacher.

Visit a wide variety of classrooms in America and one observes mixed levels of apathy, inattentiveness, off-task interaction.

When we consider the energies that are squandered in such classes–and please remember there are a few exceptional classes in every building as well–is it any wonder that so many Americans enter adulthood somewhat incurious, somewhat information deprived, somewhat ignorant, and somewhat challenged when it comes to thinking critically.

Schools that wish foster critical thinking and the individual participation that is its corollary face one simple, yet perpetual challenge:  They must find a way to make classroom experiences authentic, participatory and purposeful– not just for the brightest or most compliant–but especially for those students whose potentials lie dormant through twelve years of schooling.

A simplistic means to achieving this objective most often issues in a call to for teachers and schools to raise standards–standards for achievement, standards for quantity of homework assigned, standards for number of novels to be read, number of chapters to be covered, number of factoids to be memorized, standards for acceptable behaviors and so on.

The hue and cry for implementation of rigorous new standards is the talisman, the vaunted silver bullet that will blast educational mediocrity to smithereens.

But hard won experience tells us that merely codifying this expectation–or raising graduation rates, or multiplying the number of AP classes–is not enough.

School programs that raise performance standards without ensuring that teachers have the instructional expertise to inspire students to reach them will not achieve their goals.

But when teachers actually do have these skills, and when their classrooms become student-centered think-tanks where questions, doubts and new understandings can be authentically shared…then and only then will the elusive circle of accomplishment complete itself.

Rigor for its own sake is a pointless and a failed strategy.

Teachers may impose it; require it…but if this requirement is not balanced by the promise that each and every teacher learns to engage students in meaningful ways, then it is merely another irrelevant initiative.

But rigor that is augmented by age appropriate, challenging design, by built in skill development epiphanies, and by essential questions that underlie and connect all learning activities—this kind of “rigor” is what is desired.

Such rigor is the fruit of second order change–a school wide induction and mentoring process that engages each and every teacher in the conversation about quality instructional design–as well as classroom discussion protocols including the ideal balance between teacher talk and student talk– at both philosophical and practical levels.

What does instructional effectiveness begin to look like?

Engagement of this sort has the added benefit of finally “professionalizing” the teaching profession.  It does so by raising the level of consciousness and sense of purpose that should imbue every teacher’s approach to instructional design.

Retaining students at grade level, if implemented by a failing school that has not taken steps to ensure this kind of understanding, is both cruel and dishonest. Who has failed to deliver and to achieve?

But when an instructional program is student centered; when the process of thinking and questioning become more important than leaping to the correct answer; when classroom climates encourage all students to participate, to ruminate, to share; when backward design and essential questions create linkages that imbue learning with coherence—and when all teachers in all departments not only know what they are doing and why, but also continue to be students themselves, in love with the mystery and beauty of their respective disciplines—then, and only then, may repeating a grade be invoked.

But if, as in most schools, these conditions do not pertain, then social promotion for otherwise unimpaired students is an injustice.  An anodyne, not a cure.

So we can’t change national policy from behind our teacher desks.  We can’t single handedly ameliorate racism, poverty, inadequate school funding, or the ongoing threats of privatization–all the familiar scapegoats for school failure.

We can’t eliminate the blight of consumerism that surrounds us.  We can’t turn infotainment into real news. We can’t instantly erase a history of patriarchal, chauvinist, ethno-centric or imperialist attitudes.

Neither, alas, can we quickly unravel the malign influence of varsity sports on school culture–gigantic high school football stadiums that celebrate the achievements of the few, and which unintentionally cast non-participants–the majority of students everywhere–into the shade, their varied individual excellences undeveloped, unacknowledged, disparaged.

We teachers can’t  remedy these huge issues, though each deserves a separate discussion as a contributor to school culture dysfunction.  Each contributes in its own way to our reliance upon social promotion to obscure an institutional failure to guide all students to develop their potential.

At the same time, we teachers are certainly obligated to critically explore those large issues within the context of our lessons–and should do so often. After all, we should be attempting to turn out future citizens who are aware of things, and who can acquire the ability to think, to judge, to evaluate questions of macro importance.

All this being said, there are nevertheless many classroom level instructional and professional practices that are within our power to improve.

We can’t change the world on our own, but we can change the dynamics of the classroom–and we can take steps within the profession to ensure that all teachers become more effective practitioners.

Simple Strategies for Raising Levels of Student Achievement in Classrooms:

Here are just a few:

In each and every classroom, raised hands (not blurted answers) will be the protocol for all student responses. Raised hands, and the thought provoking silence that accompanies the teacher survey of volunteers–as well as non-volunteers–creates the think-space, wait time and performance pressure necessary for all students to eventually become engaged.

Anyone who has observed classrooms as I have knows that this is not typically standard practice.

Instead of inviting blurted (even if correct) responses from the consistently most capable students, the teacher who expects the entire class to become engaged will use wait time and silence as an instigator for thought and reflection.

The teacher will consistently check for understanding by always directing questions to specific students–whether their hands are raised or not–rather than directing a question to the class as a whole, or routinely calling upon the same high achieving students time after time.

The teacher’s conduct of lessons will always serve the goal of engaging all students–and of deliberately creating classroom spaces that are safe, that provide time for students to think, to ask questions, to express bewilderment, or to re-state (on demand) what fellow students have said as they respond to question.

For example: “Sarah: what did Jeremy just say?” Or: “Steven: Sarah has provided an answer for the question that I just posed. Will you please tell the class what she has just said?” And as a followup or clarifying question: “Do you agree?” “Why do you think this is so?” Or: “What reasons could she have had for saying this?”

Early on, more than a few students who prefer to remain in the background will not perform well when called out. Often they will say “I don’t know” which may actually mean “I don’t care.” This is to be expected. None of their previous teachers held them to account, so why should they start now?

The teacher who wishes to succeed with these students is not offended, and does not make a public display of displeasure. Instead he or she moves into coaching mode–gently repeating a process of clarification and re-direct many times during the early weeks of class.

When this becomes a consistent feature of all classrooms at all times, trust can be established, push back can be coached away, and student reluctance gradually diminishes.

An illustration of what I mean: After a student’s refusal to respond constructively, the teacher will quickly enough find the right answer from selected students, and then circle back to directly ask the disengaged one to re-state and explain the correct answer that has been supplied by his peers.

Compliance is what is sought at this stage, not content mastery. And in time, poor responses can be coached to become complete and acceptable responses.

But the first step is to establish the protocol, the procedure: this is what we do and how we do it every day.

When a classroom atmosphere is respectful, when a teacher can create a climate of trust and acceptance–most reluctant learners will enter into the spirit of the educational adventure in time, providing they have not been hardened beyond a caring teacher’s reach. And they will gradually begin to savor the delights of acquiring skills and new knowledge.

But the effort, the persistent effort to make a breakthrough–to kindle the student’s curiosity and humanity–this must always be made.

One of the great challenges in creating effective classrooms seems to be counter-intuitive:

Many educators have been trained to award on-the-spot praise to students who participate. But the challenge for teachers who want to raise participation levels for all students will be to refrain from instantly answering a student response with words of praise, such as “right!”, or “good,” “excellent.”

When overused, these instant commendations do not further the conversation; rather they shut down the possibilities for further exploration or clarification.

Even worse, they create a dependency within the weaker or more reluctant students; a dependency that is based upon the belief that if they do not participate or engage, the teacher will allow their most adept peers to carry the load.

What is the teacher’s goal after all? Is it to wave the checkered flag when one student gets the right answer, or is it to foster a process whereby all students can stumble upon a plausible answer as a result of processing information on their own?

Does the teacher want all students to cross the finish line? If so, then the teacher will often have to resist the temptation to give verbal cues that declare the case is closed. Not always; but often. Plenty of time for praise, administered later and judiciously.

In moving to adopt strategies like these, the teacher will gradually begin forsake a self sustaining professional delusion: the mirage of full student participation and rapid progress that is conjured when the instructor listens only to the brightest students who, in an unstructured setting, eagerly carry the full load of student engagement for all the rest.

Such a class may seem “lively” and may generate innumerable correct answers that move the discussion forward, but such an illusion can be achieved only by ignoring students who don’t get it instantly, or who need more time to think and process information. They are not participating, and they are not moving forward.

The teacher in an effective classroom must develop patience, and must resist the temptation to move quickly forward before he or she has verified that all students have been tracking the discussion.

Full participation and specific performance must be required from each and every student at alternating points along the way–what I refer to as a “take no prisoners approach” to instruction.

Teachers who wish to engage all students know that student growth and development have little to do with the mere imparting of information in lecture format alone. “We have covered this before” is a statement that indicates the beginning of an instructional problem that can only continue to grow: “covering” a topic or skill is not the same as implementing activities and strategies for mastering it.

The task of creating an effective classroom where all students move forward is difficult. Yet this is what it takes for teachers to lead students beyond where they are to where they have yet to go. Effective practices like these must be in place before a school program can contemplate student retention.

Students master content and consolidate their skills as young scholars at different rates. But these differently prepared students are present and waiting for instruction within a single classroom–our classrooms.

Absent effective instruction, student failure increases, and social promotion looms as the remedy. But when students are socially promoted without possessing entry level skills, teachers are forced to differentiate instruction–as if teaching different grade levels within the same classroom.

Let me say that again:  Students within each classroom are not all at the same grade level.  This is unfair to teachers, students, parents and to society.

Alas, at the end of a frustrating or disappointing instructional year, many students who do not meet standard are nevertheless given “D” grades and promoted to the next level: a level with a set curriculum that ultimately will have to be decelerated in order to manage the bewilderment or misbehavior of the under-prepared.

How frustrating it must be for some of our students to journey, year after year, through a curriculum–or a lax instructional methodology–that is not responsive to their needs.

How frustrating it must be to teach them.

Of what use is it to study “Romeo and Juliet” in a 9th grade class, for example, if a significant number of its students can barely read, think and write complex thoughts in standard English? (See how to meet this challenge here)

Of what use is it to survey chemical elements, to balance algebraic equations, or to trace the rise and fall of the Turkish caliphate for students who have yet to catch fire, whose curiosity lies dormant, or who have yet to find a personal motivation for paying the kind of attention that leads to mastery?

Why, then, do their teachers promote these struggling students to still higher levels, knowing that they are not interested in or ready to accomplish the tasks that will be set before them?  A reader who has come this far already knows the answer to this question.

Historically, differentiated instruction has been touted as the remedy for institutional failure of nerve: an unwillingness to tell the truth about where students actually are with reference to the standards, and then irresponsibly promoting them to advanced levels when they lack the skills and personal commitment to successfully perform.

But if differentiated instruction, inclusion and mainstreaming within regular classrooms cannot bridge the chasm created by such a mismatch, what is to be done?

Often, a high school’s curriculum seems to be set in stone–or is a kind of Procrustean bed that all students are challenged to lie upon–whether the bed fits them or not. It may be time, therefore, to think about creating a different “bed” for a number of the students who arrive at middle and high school unprepared for the first year of instruction.

One remedy might be the creation of high quality, skill-driven entry level sections. Students would be placed in these based upon their performance on a basic competency diagnostic; a well designed examination that assessed whether a student’s entry level skills fell within the spectrum of achievement that would be reasonable prerequisites for success.

Such sections would be designed to be a “step-up,” not a dead end. Their goal would be to equip students to focus, to master vocabularies, to become engaged in learning, and thus to move forward to an accelerated level–not to consign them to a perpetually separate track for under-performers.

Whether the students ever returned to “Romeo and Juliet” or not would be unimportant in the great scheme of things.

Sections like these would be taught by the most gifted practitioners on the teaching staff; not assigned to newcomers, or to chronically under performing teachers.

At the same time, it would be important to begin to staff existing student support learning centers with highly qualified content area, mainline educators–teachers whose skills would qualify them to teach the most rigorous courses within the school.

But to be effective, these staff members must be excellent teachers as described above.

Because the responsibility for student success falls to everyone within the school, it would be necessary to rotate both AP and Honors teachers into these support centers for one of their regularly assigned periods per day. Truly, the weakest students deserve to have access to the best and brightest practitioners on the school’s staff.

(It must be stated that there are a few Honors or AP teachers who are not effective practitioners. Some have acquired this teaching assignment as an accident of seniority, departmental favoritism and so on. Regardless, they can now easily appear to be “successful” because the gifted students who fill their classrooms are already self-motivated, and will reach high levels of achievement whether they are taught well or not.)

Teachers like these would be making a sacrifice as they exchange one of their trouble-free, compliant honors or gifted sections for a section of students who are under-prepared. Their students will be called upon to make a major sacrifice as well. If a student is failing several classes all at once, it may be time to reduce the student’s class schedule so that he/she can focus on improving in one or two core content areas. (With this caveat: Teachers in all classes must be expert at inviting students in, at diagnosing learning resistance, and at finding the means to reach the most reluctant.)

In lieu of taking social studies, for example, a student may double up on mathematics, enrolling in both the regular math course and in the newly configured, more effective learning support center.

Such students will be short of credits, and will have to make these up at summer school, or by extending their graduation date. This short-term pain is preferable to graduating without ever having become educated.

When is retention or repeating a grade appropriate?

Let us assume that highly effective instructional practices are in place within a school–that all teachers meet this standard.

If such is the case, then respect for individual student differences and for mastery learning would require that students be retained at curricular levels if they need more time to familiarize themselves with content, or to acquire the skills and work habits that will help them to become life-long learners.

During my tenure at Bellevue International School, Lake Washington International Community School, and Marysville Arts & Technology High School, students were not promoted to the next level of study until they had acquired the skills–and demonstrated the work and attendance habits–that were necessary for success as they moved forward. Both skills and work habits had to be in place for promotion to occur.

School cultures that insist upon these two expectations being met will not allow students to merely “get by,” or to deliberately, consciously under perform.

In order to preserve the quality of the learning experience at higher levels, students will not be promoted until they have demonstrated the competencies and the attitudes that will be required for constructive participation and success at the next level.

Unified staff commitment to the fulfillment of these expectations for each and every student will also prevent the forward movement of a constantly bewildered and restive learner cohort.

Hence, there will be no “D” grades. Students must earn a 70% score–a C minus or better–in order to move forward to the next level.  Unified staff commitment is the key, and I discuss more about how to achieve this goal here.

We learned at Bellevue International School and Lake Washington International Community School that repeating a course can bring enormous benefits to students who are truly “struggling.”

But without timely interventions and academic support at the earliest grades, having to repeat a poorly taught course would be Draconian.

If teachers themselves are “C minus” when it comes to designing the learning activities that are meant to inspire students to close skill gaps, then retention would be unthinkable.

But retention would be entirely appropriate in a system-wide instructional culture that meets students where they are, and that provides the support they need to “go beyond where they are.”

And if the students are not “struggling,” but rather “slip-sliding,” then retention is all the more appropriate.

Retention in these cases is one of the last opportunities educators have to alert their students to the realities of effort, economics and the working world.

A school system that practices retention has an obligation to guarantee that its teaching & learning equation is effective and self-renewing.

Curriculum must be intentional, sequential and coherent, and its learning goals must be clearly understood by both students and staff.

Most important, entry level course sections must be realistic about student capabilities. Most first level courses should have a skill emphasis–the “step-up” referred to earlier. Artfully designed, skill emphasis courses can challenge even the highest performers; poorly designed, they do not inspire.

In order to maximize success for all students, classroom activities must be appropriately sequenced, and students must be placed at the center of the experience.

Checking for understanding must become a high priority instructional strategy. Each student, in each class, must be held in a state of suspense as to when he/she will be called upon to re-state what has just occurred either in the lecture or the demonstration.

Under conditions like these, students naturally tend to be more attentive and more successful; and success creates an enthusiasm for learning that makes all standards assailable.

Do we believe in our students? Do we believe they can do this?

Many secondary content area departments are not currently in a position to accomplish this. So what must be done?

Departments must identify key skills that will be taught and reinforced in each grade, and then carried forward year to year.

Each teacher must be held accountable for effectively teaching these clearly identified skills.

Departments must also create an articulated course sequence that stair-steps previous and new learning. Courses would be sequenced and linked together by a graduated skill matrix–much as they are in mathematics classes.

The question then becomes not “when shall we do ‘The Great Gatsby,’ or cell division, or the Civil War” so much as: What skills shall we emphasize, revisit, refine, extend, apply and reinforce when we do any of these?

Curriculum that is articulated and intentionally designed along skill development lines is the means by which the belief that “all students can learn” can become reality.

Retention may be used as a tool only when such quality instruction is ensured.

Students who nevertheless need more time to acquire these skills in order to meet performance standards must be held back in applicable content area courses for the entire year.

The purpose of such consequences in cases like these is to develop within students the attitudes, aptitudes and talents that they need for success.

It is not about short-term credit retrieval or assignment completion.

Students deserve the opportunity to repeat a class in order to “get it,” and teachers deserve the opportunity to teach students who are prepared for the coursework that they offer.

But teachers all up and down the line have the obligation to be great teachers: teachers, not mere technicians who roll out predetermined course content.

In order to present themselves as candidates for promotion at the end of each school year, students must demonstrate that they have the requisite skills in order to occupy a classroom desk at the next grade level.

In an effective school system, how could it be otherwise?

If a curriculum is properly constructed with an eye toward essential questions and sequential skill development activities, then students will discover that they are not revisiting “boring” material when they repeat a class. Instead, they are being invited to explore a depth curriculum that still holds many discoveries for them.

Some of our greatest success stories have to do with students who, for a variety of reasons, struggle and then repeat–and who are ultimately guided to achievements that were within the circumference of their capabilities all along.

The self-esteem that derives from this experience is authentic, and it is earned.

What we have learned is that students who repeat discover that there is a relationship between their effort and their achievement–and therefore learn earlier (rather than later, if ever) to make a more purposive commitment to their school work.

The fact is that all students can learn; we know that.

The other fact is that a lack of motivation or training can often be the greatest impediment to student progress at a specific curricular level. Effective teachers must do their utmost to address these factors in order to inspire achievement in their students.

Teaching and learning become more productive and more enjoyable when students in each class section have earned the right to be enrolled at a particular grade level.

Our goal is to help students earn that right; and to ensure that what we are asking of them is a “reach,” but is also within their capabilities.