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Reform in the Middle Kennewick School District, Kennewick, Wash.
With community support, this school district 25 miles from the Oregon border built several new schools and a new stadium in a five-year period. It won national recognition for a reading program that sets a high standard--seeking to have 90 percent of all third-graders read at or above grade level.
Middle school students, however, posed a challenge. Over time, the district's middle schools had developed a philosophy that focused less on academics and more on adolescents' social and emotional growth. Even those students who failed to do their work were promoted to the next grade. As a result, many students with ability simply coasted through middle school, putting forth little effort.
Three years ago, this school board decided to change all that. In 1995, it directed school administrators to develop middle school promotion and accountability standards to determine which of the district's 3,300 middle school students had earned the right to be promoted. The board took this step after middle school teachers voiced concerns about promoting students who suffered no consequences for failing to do their work, and high school teachers asked why so many middle school students were entering high school unprepared.
District staff developed a rigorous set of promotion standards. Middle school students must pass all classes, maintain good attendance and behavior, and meet the standards on the district's mathematics and reading tests. Students in sixth through eighth grades who do not meet the standards may choose either to attend a special summer school or be retained in grade. To reinforce the lesson that decisions have consequences, the board decided to charge a $150 fee for the summer program, which tries to help students learn to make better decisions about their school work.
The board informed parents and the community of the new policy in the summer of 1995, a year before the policy went into effect. During that summer, and several times during the 1995-96 school year, says Superintendent Paul Rosier, the district sent letters to parents of students who had received failing grades, notifying them that standards were in place and that their children needed to improve academically or risk being retained the next year. The district also put in place an intervention system, which is a key piece of the program. Teachers developed a personal education plan for any child who had failed even one course. These plans, which included parents as partners in the process, encouraged students to attend after-school homework sessions and to meet with teachers at lunch if they needed extra help.
Those interventions reduced the number of failing students by more than 50 percent. Of the 450 middle school students who had received failing grades, 233 met the standards by the end the 1995-96 school year, thanks to the commitment of the middle school teachers who worked hard to prepare students for the next grade, says Public Information Coordinator Linda S. Cameron. And, in some cases, "it really was a matter of mom or dad saying, 'You'd better buckle down or pay your own fees to attend summer school,'" says Rosier.
Still, 217 students were left. Of those, 117 chose to attend the special summer session; 111 passed and were promoted to the next grade. The 106 students who either did not attend or did not pass summer school were not promoted. "The good news is," says Cameron, "that after the wake-up call in February, nearly 350 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students stopped coasting, changed their learning behavior, met the standards, and passed."
But the new promotion and accountability plan apparently did not sit well with parents of many of the middle school students who were not promoted. In fact, the Kennewick school district lost 70 percent of those middle school students who were held back at the end of the 1995-1996 school year. "They went somewhere else," says Rosier. "They hadn't been promoted, so their parents looked at other options."
By the end of the next school year, though, students were making a greater commitment to staying in the district. Last year, 246 middle school students were recommended for retention, and 144 students were actually retained at the end of the 1996-97 school year--but 80 percent of those students chose to stay in the school system. "People realize there is no quick and easy way to run from this situation," says Rosier. There are no easy options, he says, especially since other districts are considering implementing similar promotion and accountability plans. And surveys indicate that the district's plan has won overwhelming support among parents, staff, and students. "Parents did recognize the importance of what we're doing and were just as concerned and discouraged because they didn't know what to do," Rosier says.
Rosier credits the board of education with the vision to move forward with a strong policy. "The board made this happen--literally--because it was concerned with the number of students in high school who were not doing well. Board members said they would take the heat for the decision, and we expected a lot of heat when we had 100 kids in middle school that we didn't promote," he recalls. But only three families appealed the school district's decision to the board.
The "bottom line," Rosier says, "is that we had 850 kids who, in the last two years, were put on notice, but 620 of them shaped up and were promoted. In the past, I bet those 850 kids would have floated right through. The fact is, this is not just a retention scheme but a scheme to intervene at several levels to get kids turned on to academic school work." In the past, middle school students may have thought it was cool not to work hard, but they are coming to the conclusion that "it's definitely not cool not to be promoted," Rosier says.
For more information, contact Linda S. Cameron, public information coordinator, Kennewick School District, at (509) 585-3035 or at cameli@ksd.org. The district's web site is at www.ksd.org. |
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