End Social Promotion
Children who are unable to read at grade level by the 3rd grade should not be allowed promotion to 4th grade.
This is a no-cost solution which will have a most valuable impact on education. Children who are lacking the grade appropriate academic ability become behavior problems. The cycle worsens with each year. No manager would promote an employee into a job he/she is unable to do. It just doesn't make any sense. We will continue to fail our children, if we continue to place them in academic environments for which they are not ready. The Arizona Department of Education and the Arizona Legislature continue to suffer from short-sightedness. Ask any third grade teacher. It saddens me to see children who are set up for failure by a system which fails them. Think of the financial savings to our state: lessened behavior problems because children are ready to learn and are engaged in the learning process. It has been proven that classroom behavior problems escalate into delinquency problems.
Agreed. The argument that a student's self-esteem will suffer if retained, and then the student will cause problems because they are not with their friends is antiquated. Self-esteem is built by being successful. If a student is not successful, giving them a social promotion isn't going to change anything except put more pressure on the next teacher to make sure all students are on grade level.
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