As Jeb Bush’s claims of miraculous powers of education reform spread across the land, South Carolina is considering legislation to flunk third-graders who don’t pass the state’s standardized test.
The legislation, introduced by State Senate Majority Leader Harvey Peeler, would cause about 3,000 children to be held back. Research is clear that grade retention is highly associated with dropping out in later grades. Low test scores are highly correlated with high poverty.
But South Carolina prefers to go in search of the “Florida miracle.”
How many young lives will be blighted before the Florida miracle is as discredited as the earlier Bush’s “Texas miracle”?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, to use your term, The Billionaires Boys Club, wield tremendous influence over our government. I think the ed reform movement is mostly a concerted effort to distract society from the real cause of educational failure in order to protect the enormous tax breaks bestowed upon the wealthy individuals and corporations over the last several decades. Government revenue appears to be at an almost all time low as a percentage of GDP, hence the endless pressure to privatize public functions such as education. Naturally the shrewd cut-throat business people are seizing the opportunity for big profits. Notice what the wealthy have stopped screaming about in the last few years…the flat tax! A few years ago they were constantly screaming that our taxes were to complicated and a simple flat tax that applies to all income levels would be fairest. Well you don’t hear cries about that any more because the wealthy are currently paying a lower “effective’ tax rate than the average middle class family. This is what they want to protect in addition to destroying the vehicle that can help keep their power in check…unions.
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It’s definitely a grab for money and power. I have to agree with Brocoum.
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Michael – Couldn’t agree more. Here’s a clear, brief overview of what is going on in Jeff Winters’ Democracy and Oligarchy. “…Universal suffrage and liberal freedoms empower all citizens in a radically equal manner. But the one-person/one-vote principle does little to prevent oligarchs from exercising the power of money in a manner that is profoundly unequal. … full political equality, even in the most liberal democracy, is impossible as long as concentrated wealth places grossly unequal political influence in the hands of a few citizens. …” Unions (and teachers make up a large share of the small remnant of unions remaining) are about all that’s left as a counter weight to the oligarchs.
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I agree. We are under siege.
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Control really needs to return to local schools. If kids don’t pass that test in 3rd grade, they probably live in poverty, they probably don’t read either. Retention may not be a bad idea – but at least give teacher the resources and time to do what needs to be done for the individual students
The standardized tests are the same every year, but the customers (i.e. students) are wildly different, and change non-stop. When will people realize this? What a national disaster we are in!
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Probably not nearly as many young lives that will be blighted when kids are socially promoted from one grade to the next without being able to read. That’s real compassion, for you.
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Oops. And forgot this.
Heck with Florida. Just because they rank second to Maryland in NAEP gains since the 1990s. Lucky Diane doesn’t believe in NAEP.
Who would want to copy that?
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Missy, do you believe in miracles? Only in church or other religious institutions. Not in school. Sorry.
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Diane, I totally agree with you about the fact that only in church or other religious institutions should we believe in miracles. But is it interesting that Texas and Florida, and Teach for American, who knows else, use the metaphor of the miracles to talk about schools. This idea … this use of something metaphysical is to assuage us into docility, accepting every word they present. The word miracle has power. But the data from Texas tells us otherwise. Rod Paige failed, if I am correct, to produce true/ meaningful learning gains in Texas. So too will Jeb Bush, wrought with so much baggage, fail to deliver. Not in school. Sorry was the right answer. But in the capital buildings of each state, I don’t know that unless we change our narrative, stop listening to Rod and Jeb, we’ll be faced with some serious legislation that’s going to damage public education.
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Nice little quip that avoids the question. And the data. Pretty typical.
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The same legislative language is in the NC Excellence in Education Act Rep. Berger is pushing through the NC General Assembly Education/ Higher Education Committee. Question: is this legislation language (reading/ passing grade-level assessments/ grade retention/ 3rd grade gateway) coming from one source? It appears that many state governments are proposing the same kind of educational “de”-form all coming from one source.
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In the county in South Carolina where I taught, it was against the law to hold a child back who was failing at the end of the year without parental permission. All the teacher could do was write “Promoted without Teacher Reccomendation” to try and cover herself in case the parents were to come back later and sue the teacher for the child not being prepared and promoted.
In middle school (don’t know about elementary), students were not allowed averages below 60 on any 9 week progress report or report card. “The student will not be able to climb out of the hole if it’s too deep”. This was in both of the middle schools I taught at in both South Carolina and Georgia.
Needless to say many of my 6th graders read below a 3rd grade level.
So even if you mandate to fail a child who fails standardized tests, I do not know if they have the authority to retain the student while still in Elementary school.
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We already had a Texas miracle, now a Florida miracle. What do both miracles have in common? The Bush name.
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This is like a bad dream of back to the future! There is enough research (evidence is written in the article in Diane’s Blog on the “Florida Miracle”) to say that retention is harmful and ineffective for the greater number of identified children. Put a child back into a like program without knowing what the cause of his failed school experience may be is like taking a child back to a doctor who continues to give the wrong medicine without the blood work to know what the child is ailing from. A stab in the dark with hit or miss attitude. Kindergarten may be the only exception where you are giving a child another
year of maturity (LD children are often lagging years in maturity).
As for the Bush Family, who seem to have huge sway over the education reforms,seem to have forgotten their own struggle with various learning disabilities. (example could be putting a person with Dyscalculia in charge of a bank while he relies on everyone else for running and oversight of the bank, while signing his name to things but has no clear oversight ability and we end up in one of the countries original worse banking scandals. Oh well!! I think one of the Bush brothers can attest to that.)
In fact, children of other government leaders have had the benefit of early diagnoses and private instruction and programs for their children. If only the walls of a school in Washington,D.C., called the Lab School or the other prestigious schools for LD children around the country could talk. Confidentiality protects the child (as it should) from our knowing. It wasn’t a matter of retention for them but a right program with skilled and trained education professionals to teach them, after they were evaluated and identified with some information on why they were failing in the first place. I don’t fault their parents for getting them everything they needed, but taking that opportunity away from other peoples children is wrong. Leaving the child back is a cheap delay tactic.
The field of special education and it’s research can benefit teachers on knowing how to approach and teach a child’s learning style. A book that was clear to recognize what was coming ahead was Kauffman and Hallihan’s “Throwing Baby Out With The Bathwater” and you need only follow Kozol and others (like Diane Ravitch) to have
seen the handwriting on the wall of education. Then there is the research on poverty
and the reasons why children who don’t eat or have enough nutritional value to the foods they eat, live in lead and environmentally destructive housing, kids in a transient
lifestyle, drugs and alcohol related environments, on and on and on, have no net or
level education playing field. They present with learning disabilities, medical crises (school nurses are on the front lines of this), psychological inhibitors, anger and rage,
…should I go on?!!!!!!!!!!! Leave them back to what!!!!!!!!
Poverty,disenfranchised,and special needs afflicted children are under attack because there are those who do not have the patience, are ignorant of the advanced education research on learners, are only interested in corporate and business interests-greed, and believe these children are not worth the money or time. That they are not the value added child with no problems or educational stresses who are needed immediately for the technological jobs of the current society. We are in a race to the top and there are those who can only focus to what they think are the best and the brightest. Big mistake!!!! Hidden in view are creative intelligent (learning challenged are children with average, above, and gifted intelligence who can learn but learn differently and need to be identified and moved forward with appropriate accommodations) and who have proven to be some of our most adept leaders and contributors in all fields needed to further society or very simply make society work.
Are you listening Bush Family, Kennedy Family, Einstein’s Family, Edison’s Family, on and on and on and on……
Deliberately eaving populations of people behind to be the grunt workers for others without choice of their own is not what this country is about or founded upon. This entire reform movement is about follow the money for private coffers, power, and expediency for global market advancement. It is on a fast track that appears so well financially put in place that only hoards of people, parents and teachers, standing on the tracks of the oncoming train could help to stop it before it is done! Add in virtual education and you have just given your child’s mind away to the unseeing and uncaring puppet masters! Yes! Even the wealthy and powerful will be helpless before that………
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The AZ Supt of Public Instruction, who never spent a day of his life in a public school, is a Jeb Bush groupie. AZ adopted the Florida “milagro.” Now we have an A to F grading system for schools, and third graders who are Falls Far below on the state test will be retained, beginning next year. There will be an exemption for those not proficient in English and students with IEPs.
Our state legislature has a Republican majority, so what ever the ALEC agenda dictates, AZ Republicans will embrace it.
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As a high school English teacher who has 17 and 18 year-olds in my class who can’t read, I would definitely be in favor of retention of third graders. Passing children along does them no favors and sets them behind and sets them up for future failure that they are unlikely to be able to overcome. Much better to fix the problem at age 9 than continue to graduate people who lack basic reading skills and who as adults will suffer the rest of their lives.
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