By Adam Kramer
The Board of Education declared summer school a success last week with the announcement that 63.4 percent of the students who attended citywide were promoted even though only 41 percent passed the reading exam and just 37.3 percent aced the math exam.
School officials, who issued a report on summer school 2000, said they were happy with the results of the city's ambitious program, which was put into place after the Board of Ed ended social promotion and required failing students to attend summer school in 1999.
A higher percentage of students qualified for promotion to the next grade this year than last.
Five days after the first day of class on July 5, about 40 percent of the 320,000 students targeted for summer school had not shown up for classes, but the number of students increased later in the summer, officials said.
“Summer school was a monumental task, and I think it worked well,” said William Thompson, Board of Education president.
At the Board's meeting Aug. 23, officials announced that of the 62,537 students who were mandated to attend summers school in grades three through eight, 39,652 were promoted to the next grade, while 20,408 were held back and 2,477 had yet to be recorded.
The Board of Ed did not break down attendance, test scores or promotion levels on a borough or district-by-district basis.
“I am satisfied,” said Thompson. “I think the numbers are better then we hoped for. Thank goodness fewer students were retained than expected.”
Even though 63.4 percent of the students were promoted to the next grade level, only 41 percent of the 26,282 students who took the reading test reached Level 2, basic proficiency and only 37.3 percent of the 34,490 students who took the math exam achieved level 2.
Thompson said promotion was based on three criteria: test scores, class work and attendance. He said he thought the exact number of students who failed the math or reading standardized test and were promoted was very small.
The multiple criteria allowed the teachers to make the final determination on whether the student would be promoted, he said. Thousands of students will be required to repeat the same grade because the test standards were harder than last year, said Thompson.
“I think the summer school numbers were OK,” said Ninfa Segarra, a mayor's appointee to the Board of Ed. “It looks like the program was a success and for a seven-week program, 60 percent of the students getting promoted is good.”
Segarra said the decision whether to promote a student was based on the criteria approved by the Board of Ed. She said the board has to make sure that it did not promote children who were not ready to proceed with the course work in school.
“Not every child does well on standardized testing,” she said. “The student's relationship with the teacher is critical, and we allowed the teachers [with their] professional judgment to decide if the child gets promoted.”
The eighth grade had the highest percentage of students promoted to the next grade, with 72.3 percent of the students or 7,752 children moving to the ninth grade. The third grade had the lowest percentage of promotions with 6,478 – or 52.1 percent – of the mandated students being moving to the fourth grade.
Last year about 57 percent of the summer school students were promoted to the next grade, a slightly lower promotion rate than this year. Last year there were 35,000 students who were mandated to attend summer school in grades three, six and eight, but it was later determined that 8,700 had been mistakenly required to attend.
