Word: tested
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...attendance record at Doolittle East middle school in Chicago. But a little over a year ago she faltered at crunch time, and she has paid a stinging price ever since. In the spring of 1998 Walker scored well below her grade level on the reading section of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. Chicago's widely hailed policy aimed at ending social promotion--the practice of automatically passing students to the next grade--required her to attend summer school. At the end of it she fell short again, which meant she had to repeat eighth grade. She watched...
This spring, Walker, 15, the oldest of eight children, got another chance. But she failed again, by four-tenths of a point, on the Iowa test's reading section. She is headed to summer school for one final shot at getting into high school in the fall. If she doesn't make it, she will go to one of the city's "transition centers"--an educational way station for kids who haven't qualified for high school but are too old to remain in a regular eighth-grade classroom...
...that the performance of students can be improved if schools establish standards and insist that kids meet them before moving on to the next grade--has a simple, sound-bite toughness. It appeals to parents and teachers at a time when frustration with student underachievement is boiling over. Distressing test results released this spring in states like Louisiana (where 40% of eighth-graders flunked the state's exam in math) and New York (where 40% of fourth-graders flunked a new state exam in reading) have only strengthened the cause...
...enthusiasm for the hard-line approach started in Chicago. Since 1996, after Mayor Richard Daley took control of the school system and appointed his budget chief, Paul Vallas, as its chief executive, the city has used standardized-test scores to help determine whether students should move to the next grade. In the 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...
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...