ACT NOW TO AVOID TOUGH
ACADEMIC CHOICES IN JUNE

From PTA meetings to student-teacher conferences to the pages of your daily newspaper, the term “social promotion” is becoming a familiar, and sometimes emotional, topic of discussion. It happens when teachers decide to pass students on to the next grade even though they know they have not met the standards of achievement for the current grade. For decades it’s been done, usually subconsciously, to avoid damaging children’s self-esteem. But over the past few years the rules and rhetoric around the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act and concerns about high schoolers who are unqualified for graduation have led scores of educators to curtail the practice.

And yet the most obvious alternative – “grade retention” – has engendered a good bit of tense discussion as well. While conventional wisdom would lead many to believe that students have a better chance of mastering material by going through a year’s worth of schooling a second time, many educators and organizations – including the national Association of School Psychologists – argue that many of these students develop social and behavioral problems that inhibit their long-term academic achievement.

If your child is struggling academically, chances are neither option will be very appealing when this school year ends – which is why you need to take action now to ensure that you and your child’s teachers are confident that he or she is indeed ready to move forward this June.

One way to do this is to keep track of what your child should be achieving at various points of each individual school year. Report cards and progress reports are good indicators, as are test scores and comments from teachers. But it’s also important to pay close attention to the chronological direction of your child’s progress. If your son or daughter performed well during the first and second quarter of this school year, chances are good that he or she built a solid foundation for the increasingly difficult challenges that typically mark the third and fourth quarters. If grades have gone down as the year has gone on, your child will have to work very hard to stop a downward spiral and catch up before promotion or retention decisions are made.

So if that second quarter report card was uninspiring, it’s important to talk with your child’s teacher as soon as possible. Find out which skills your son or daughter is trying to master. Ask if there are any behavioral issues that are impacting academic achievement, and if the teacher is satisfied that your child is completing homework satisfactorily and on time. Make sure you understand what skills your child should be acquiring and find out if extra assistance is available for helping your son or daughter catch up.

But it’s also important to take a long-range view, and make sure you understand exactly which skills your child should be mastering at each grade in the K-12 continuum. The early grades are especially critical for acquiring reading, language and mathematics skills that form the foundation for higher level work. Success in middle school requires more reasoning and critical thinking skills that are vital for understanding literature, history and other humanities. And as most parents of high schoolers know, the last three years are literally the make-or-break point for charting a course for higher education and the demands of the workplace today.

In most cases, you can also find a wealth of information on your state’s Department of Education Web site. Most of these sites provide a detailed description of the academic standards students must master at each grade. Most schools pay close attention to these standards and align their curriculums, teaching and tests to them. Knowing what your child is expected to know in every subject will help you gauge his or her progress toward meeting those expectations. Most sites also have special resources for parents who want to be better partners in their children’s studies, such as how to monitor homework and study habits, how to help your child become a better reader, and how to instill a lifelong love of learning that will give your child powerful fuel in the race to achieve for years to come.

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