PAGE Comments on Delaying Social Promotion for This Year's Third Graders -
The State is Not Ready This Year
During the 2001 legislative session, PAGE supported the legislation to end social promotion, but our support was qualified. We said we could support the legislation provided that students were identified early and given appropriate remedial opportunities. Our support was also contingent upon a differentiated education program being put in place for those students who were not being promoted. We said that it made no sense to give a student more of the same type of instruction which preceded the student’s initial failure.
No one wants to see students promoted to the next grade when they have not learned the material. That is a recipe for failure and frustration - for the student and the teacher. But what we said when this law first passed is true today: Calling for an end to social promotion is the easy part. The difficult - and costly - part of this is providing the needed instructional and professional development resources that will equip teachers with the tools and time needed to reach every child.
All students can achieve, but not all in the same way or in the same time frame. Tailoring instructional programs for hard to teach students is a complex and expensive undertaking.
Since 2001 we have seen little in the way of a comprehensive and coordinated effort by the state department of education to either require or assist local systems in clearly identifying students at risk of not being promoted. Nor have we seen any such effort to provide a different education program for third grade students who will not be promoted this spring - unless the implementation is delayed.
An additional concern voiced by many at the time the initial legislation passed was that such a plan to have a promotion "gateway" at the third grade, based heavily on a single test would most heavily affect poor and minority children. Because of that concern the "Closing the Gap Commission" was created to research why such an education gap existed and how it could be closed. That group never issued a final report and has quietly gone out of business. This is hardly the way to comprehensively address such serious problems surrounding the end of social promotion.
PAGE will support a delay in the third grade promotion policy because it is obvious to us that Georgia is in no way ready to implement such a policy.
As we have said, to do this the right way will be challenging and it will not be done overnight, but we must ultimately do it. In the long run it will be the only way to help every child and lift Georgia’s overall academic achievement levels on state and national measures.