Tuesday, July 04, 2000
Extra school year has some support
By Ben L. Kaufman
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Monday's national proposal to give failing public school students an extra year to succeed in high school amazed educators in Hamilton County's Northwest School District.
They've done it for years and plan to continue, Assistant Superintendent Tracy Feldmann said. “I'm astounded that all districts don't allow seniors to have a second year.”
A spot check of Tristate school districts suggests that Northwest is unusual in already having embraced this approach to failing students.
The new proposal came from Sandra Feldman (no relation), president of the American Federation of Teachers, at the AFT's biennial convention in Philadelphia.
Sandra Feldman said too many students fail to graduate because they were educated under lax standards and are being clobbered with tough, new requirements and proficiency tests.
In Northwest, with more than 10,000 students, failing students get two chances to catch up, Tracy Feldmann said:
Eighth-graders who lack credits to enter high school become “second year” eighth graders. The “vast majority” catch up and enter ninth grade on merit. Those who already are 15 are promoted regardless of their grades as are those who don't do well in their second shot at eighth grade work.
ã12th-graders with insufficient credits can leave without a diploma or return as “second year” seniors.
Northwest has more than 600 seniors at its two high schools. In the academic year that just ended, an uncommonly high number — 36 — were second year seniors but all of them were graduated. Typically, she said, about 20 repeat their senior year and 15 are graduated.
In addition, Colerain and Northwest High Schools are shifting schedules in August to allow students to take an extra credit each year or to do remedial work without falling behind their class.
Cincinnati has no formal programs like those in Northwest and the estimated 20 percent of all seniors who fail to graduate could come back to finish their credits “but they generally don't,” Associate Superintendent Kathleen Ware said.
In the 1998-1999 school year, 302 seniors failed to graduate; of them, 84 returned for the 1999-2000 school year to get their diplomas.
Cincinnati is moving to a new system of periodic testing for promotion in which “time should be variable,” and a student who needs extra time to complete a given course will have that without necessarily repeating a year.
Campbell County schools will let a senior repeat a year, but it is unnecessary, Assistant Supt. Linda Alford said, given the other ways to earn missing credits — distance learning, correspondence, summer school.
Winton Woods schools will let a senior come back and finish courses if they don't graduate on schedule, Supt. Thomas L. Richey said, but there is no formal program.
Also, by then, there has been three years of summer school if they needed it.
Loveland seniors who fail to earn their diplomas may come back in summer school to make up missing credits but are not allowed a second 12th grade year, Supt. Michael Cline said.
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