Repeat performance: When charter schools hold students back, is it helping them succeed in the long term -- or does it just improve short-term test results?

10-18-2010

By Sarah Garland/American Prospect

Last summer, Rebekah Robinson was called into her son Amari Jacob's charter school, Kings Collegiate in New York City, to meet with a counselor about Amari's grades. The good news was Amari had passed the state tests in math and reading. The bad news was his teachers thought he should repeat fifth grade anyway. Robinson, a 43-year-old mother of two from Saint Lucia, knew the school in her neighborhood would have promoted her son to the next grade. But she was pleased the charter school was so strict. Although Amari was good at math and science, he'd struggled with reading since fourth grade, when he had attended his neighborhood school in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. "He could have gone on, but in his school work, we thought he was just not ready," Robinson says. Uncommon Schools, which runs Kings Collegiate, and the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) are among the more prominent charter-school networks that avoid "social promotion," the practice of passing low-performing students to the next grade in order to keep them with their peers. (more…)

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Repeat performance: When charter schools hold students back, is it helping them succeed in the long term -- or does it just improve short-term test results?

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