Word: passing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...social promotion within four years. In Texas, G.O.P. presidential favorite George W. Bush made the ending of social promotion the centerpiece of his much praised education agenda. His state legislature is expected to approve a bill this month that will require third-graders, beginning in 2003, to pass state reading and math tests before being promoted. Four other states approved similar measures last year. Urban districts such as Boston, Philadelphia and Seattle have vowed their own crackdowns. In New York City, 50,000 failing students in the third, fifth and eighth grades may be retained if they don't pass...
...year before the new approach, less than 2% of students were forced to repeat a grade; last year close to 15% of third-, sixth- and eighth-graders were retained. The city spent $24 million last year on summer programs designed to give kids one last chance to pass the Iowa test before September. It invested $10 million in hiring new teachers to tutor retained students. If test scores are the measure, the stricter policy is working. Math and reading results in the elementary and high school grades are at their highest level in a decade...
Requiring students to pass tests in order to be promoted to the next grade hardly guarantees that they're getting a better education. Because many teachers feel compelled to "teach to the test," students may learn to pass the gateway exam but be left without the skills needed to progress much further. At Doolittle East in Chicago, Alfred Rembert taught a sixth-grade class this year in which all the students were repeating the grade. Half of them were promoted in January. Rembert spent most of this semester preparing the remainder for a fourth try on the Iowas. "All this...
...American students have been held back at some point in their childhood. (Among blacks and Hispanics the figure is close to 50%.) Just how high do we want the percentages to go? This year the Harvey-Dixmoor school district in Illinois tried to require eighth-graders to pass the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills before they could go on to high school. Of 172 students, three-quarters flunked. After realizing the impracticality of flunking so many (and withstanding a shower of complaints from furious parents), the school board put off its promotion plan for another year. Chicago's policy, meanwhile...
...That was only the screensaver. There is more where that came from. Obey my commandments or a virus could come to pass that would bring the information age to a shuddering halt. I did a flood once, and behold, I can do viruses. Once men tried to reach heaven by building a tower, and I made their formats incompatible. I could do this again. Or I can do love and redemption. I am, after all, God. P.S. Your move...