Thousands of O.C. Pupils at Risk of Retention in Fall

Thousands of Orange County’s elementary and middle school pupils are expected to repeat a grade next school year under a new state law barring social promotion--the once-widespread practice of advancing students despite failing marks.

Those students are already swelling enrollment in after-school and Saturday classes in an attempt to avoid being held back. Others have enrolled in tutorials or joined homework clubs, boning up on reading or math.

In the coming weeks, academic underachievers will learn whether their summers will be spent lolling at the mall or toiling over equations in a last-ditch attempt to earn promotion.

The end of social promotion has vastly increased paperwork for teachers and principals, who must prove they’re making the right decision or risk legal action by angry parents. And it is creating chaos for administrators whose decisions on whether to hire more teachers or order portable classrooms must be based on ever-evolving predictions of how many students are advancing or staying back.

“I compare [ending social promotion] to fixing a plane mid-flight,” said Gary Rutherford, an administrator in the Westminster School District, where as many as 500 of 9,853 students might have to repeat a grade. “It’s kind of life and death, very serious for the kids who are affected by it. We’re applying [the law] as thoughtfully as we can.”

Few quarrel with the need to halt the widespread practice of promoting students who lag years behind their classmates. But many educators confess to feeling trepidation about the politically popular step.

Research findings on holding students back are generally unfavorable. Many teachers fear that students who repeat the same lessons in the same old way are destined to fail again, or drop out. The challenge is fashioning new classes for kids who repeat, ones that will engage them while backfilling learning gaps.

For a peek at how the sweeping changes will play out, educators can look to Anaheim’s junior highs, where school officials this school year held back 560 eighth-graders, mostly boys, who didn’t make a C average.

James Harris, 15, is among them. Despite repeated warnings, he thought he could slouch through Ball Middle School with mostly Cs and Ds. Being held back was a sobering surprise, said James, now a straight-A student in an intensive program for held-back students.

“Last year, I really didn’t care,” said James, who now frequents the library after the school bell rings. “I was much lazier. . . . I didn’t think they would hold me back--it hadn’t happened in the past, so I figured they were just saying it.”

Now he knows otherwise. But for every three students who raise their grades as he has, one classmate still flounders. So Anaheim is creating an alternative high school for those whose grades don’t improve after a year of retention.

State Allots $105 Million to Aid Schools’ Efforts

The final figures on held-back students will take months to come in. Officials want to scour final grades, test scores or summer school results before making those decisions. But a survey of school districts by The Times showed that more than 3,000 of the county’s 345,000 middle and elementary students are candidates for staying back.

Numbers were not available for a few districts, including Orange and Newport-Mesa, where administrators said individual schools were keeping their own numbers on students at risk of retention.

The county has never tracked the number of students retained, so there are no statistics on how many students have been held back in recent years. Those numbers will be compiled now as the new law is implemented, said Bill Habermehl, associate superintendent for instruction at the Orange County Department of Education.

But Habermehl said the number of students retained in the past was “far less” than what is contemplated under the new law. “There wasn’t a lot of money to support summer school efforts” for struggling students, he said.

To that end, the state has set aside $105 million for summer school programs and other extras to help students on the cusp of retention or trailing academically. But officials in several districts said that amount is far below what’s needed to help failing students.

Most Orange County school districts--Santa Ana’s being the notable exception--are holding students back this year in at least grades two through five, and at the end of elementary and middle school. Garden Grove will limit retention to students in third, sixth and eighth grades.

Trying Hard to Obey s Law With ‘No Teeth’

Officials in all districts say their aim is to help struggling students succeed before holding them back. But in Garden Grove and Santa Ana, the county’s two biggest districts, educators say they won’t begin to hold back many pupils until at least 18 months of “intervention” efforts have had a chance to take hold.

Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school system, is staggering its retentions, to avoid being paralyzed by the large numbers expected.

State law requires that school districts have policies on what standards students must meet, but it doesn’t specify when districts should start holding them back.

“I’ve worked here for 20 years, and I’ve never seen a law like this--one that doesn’t have a deadline for implementation,” said Dennis Parker, who manages the promotion and retention program for the California Department of Education. That said, “people are making a good-faith effort to follow the law, despite the fact that there are no teeth to it.”

Ending social promotion was a popular theme of former Gov. Pete Wilson--one that also resonated with President Clinton and Gov. Gray Davis. In 1988, Wilson signed two laws requiring the state to set minimum standards for what students should know to be promoted to the next grade and setting aside money for remedial classes for failing students.

The law provides an exemption if teachers put in writing their belief that retention is not in the best interest of a particular student. And students who are limited English speakers will be judged on their progress in learning the language before they are held to the regular standards.

Most Orange County school districts are relying on a combination of scores on standardized Stanford 9 exams, grades, local tests and writing samples to determine which students advance a grade.

Officials in Anaheim’s severely crowded elementary schools, where students already have a year-round calendar with staggered start times, say they would have a facilities emergency if their Spanish-speaking students were held initially to the same standards as theirEnglish-fluent peers.

“We would have to build 10 new schools,” said a half-serious Phyllis Reed, director of pupil services for the Anaheim City School District. “It would be catastrophic for us.”

Last fall, so that there would be no surprises, school districts in the county began notifying certain parents about the possibility of retention, in many cases using the students’ Stanford 9 scores as an early indicator of academic trouble.

Teachers and principals met with parents of lagging students to draft improvement plans that included extra help before and after school, and on weekends. Student progress was evaluated throughout the school year, with updates based on more recent grades and tests.

But education professor Russell Rumberger questions whether all these intervention efforts get to the root of underachieving students’ problems--academic, social and behavioral. His research at UC Santa Barbara on students who quit school shows that those who were held back a year--even in kindergarten--are more likely to drop out than those who weren’t.

“Even if the kid improves their academic ability in some way [by being held back], they might be socially damaged and feel like they were left behind,” Rumberger said. “That stuff isn’t necessarily going to be addressed by remediation.”

Teachers Worry About Parents’, Schools’ Wrath

In Orange County, educators are casting a wide net to find students at risk of retention and offering help to as many as possible. Far fewer students are expected to actually be held back.

For example, at the start of the school year, officials in Huntington Beach’s Ocean View School District notified parents of 1,200 students that their children were at risk of being held back. Fewer than half now are on the verge of retention, and more are expected to improve by the end of the school year. In South County’s Saddleback Valley schools, 462 of the 1,335 students initially deemed at risk still may face retention.

Trying to make their decisions unimpeachable, many educators are keeping detailed files on students’ progress.

In Santa Ana, which expects to start holding back more students next school year, teachers are expressing concerns to union President Martha Correll.

“I’m hearing a number of teachers saying, ‘We’re going to be retaining almost all our kids,’ ” Correll said. They also worry that angry parents will sue teachers who hold their kids back and that teachers will be penalized if many of their students are retained.

“We’re not sure how much the teachers will be held accountable,” Correll said. “If you promote a child, and next year they fail, will the teacher who promoted the child be held accountable? Does that open the door to lawsuits?”

“It’s a very stressful time for teachers,” added Reed of the Anaheim City district. “They’re making decisions for these kids that can have lifetime effects, positive or negative. They need to have their ducks in a row, to justify why they’re retaining a student or why not.”

Parker, who administers the new law for the state Education Department, said teachers won’t be held liable individually, but lawsuits are always possible.

While teachers and principals grapple with those questions, their bosses are trying to make hiring and facilities decisions. Six more teachers or two fewer? Three more portable classrooms or eight?

Administrator Jack Elsner heads personnel at the Huntington Beach Union High School District. Those schools serve grades nine through 12, so Elsner and his colleagues don’t have to worry about students at that level being held back. But four elementary school systems--Westminster, Ocean View, Fountain Valley and Huntington Beach--send their students to Elsner’s high schools. Those districts may retain about 1,100 students. So an uncertain number of incoming freshmen makes it difficult to know how many high school teachers are needed.

Some teachers are retiring or going on leave, so Elsner won’t have to freeze hiring. But he’s hard-pressed to know if he needs new ones.

The crackdown on social promotion adds “a whole new variable,” Elsner said. “At best, [hiring] is a big puzzle. It’s like a checkerboard. We keep moving the pieces around.”

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Repeating a Grade

More than 3,000 Orange County students might have to repeat a grade next year because of a state law that ends social promotion, the practice of passing students who are failing. The chart shows the estimated number of students who are candidates for retention and the number their districts expect will actually be held back. Final retention numbers will not be available until the end of summer.

District: Anaheim City

Total enrollment: 21,000

Grades Implementing: 2-6

Number at risk: 1,400

Expected to retain:* N/A

*

District: Anaheim Union

Total enrollment: 28,553

Grades Implementing: 8

Number at risk: 1,200

Expected to retain:* 500

*

District: Brea Olinda

Total enrollment: 5,987

Grades Implementing: K-6, 8

Number at risk: 104

Expected to retain:* 34-52

*

District: Buena Park

Total enrollment: 5,350

Grades Implementing: K-8

Number at risk: 713

Expected to retain:* 100-170

*

District: Capistrano

Total enrollment: 43,874

Grades Implementing: 2-8

Number at risk: 244

Expected to retain:* fewer than 212

*

District: Centralia

Total enrollment: 5,155

Grades Implementing: 2-6

Number at risk: 270-360

Expected to retain:* 35-70

*

District: Cypress

Total enrollment: 4,800

Grades Implementing: 2-6

Number at risk: 300

Expected to retain:* 75

*

District: Fountain Val

Total enrollment: 6,241

Grades Implementing: 2-8

Number at risk: 401

Expected to retain:* fewer than 50

*

District: Fullerton Ele

Total enrollment: 12,200

Grades Implementing: K-8

Number at risk: 800

Expected to retain:* fewer than 400

*

District: Garden Grove

Total enrollment: 45,881

Grades Implementing: K-8

Number at risk: 1,823

Expected to retain:* about 185

*

District: Hunt. Beach City

Total enrollment: 6,823

Grades Implementing: 2-8

Number at risk: 247

Expected to retain:* 20-40

*

District: Irvine

Total enrollment: 23,015

Grades Implementing: K-8

Number at risk: 1,332

Expected to retain:* N/A

*

District: Laguna Beach

Total enrollment: 2,511

Grades Implementing: K-8

Number at risk: N/A

Expected to retain:* 20-30

*

District: Los Alamitos

Total enrollment: 8,394

Grades Implementing: 2-8

Number at risk: N/A

Expected to retain:* N/A

*

District: Magnolia

Total enrollment: 6,552

Grades Implementing: K-6

Number at risk: 200

Expected to retain:* N/A

*

District: Ocean View

Total enrollment: 9,854

Grades Implementing: K-8

Number at risk: 1,200

Expected to retain:* 600

*

District: Placentia-Yorba

Total enrollment: 25,700

Grades Implementing: K-6, 8

Number at risk: 2,172

Expected to retain:* fewer than 387

*

District: Saddleback Valley

Total enrollment: 34,000

Grades Implementing: K-8

Number at risk: 1,335

Expected to retain:* 462

*

District: Tustin

Total enrollment: 16,297

Grades Implementing: 2-8

Number at risk: 3,000

Expected to retain:* 100-150

*

District: Westminster

Total enrollment: 9,853

Grades Implementing: 2-8

Number at risk: 1,185

Expected to retain:* fewer than 500

*

* All numbers approximate; many districts won’t make final retention decisions until late summer.

N/A Some data were not available.

Note: The Fullerton Joint and Huntington Beach Union high school districts are not included because the state law does not apply to high school students, who graduate based on credits accumulated. Information for the La Habra, Newport-Mesa, Orange and Savanna school districts was not available. Santa Ana won’t begin actively retaining students until the 2001-02 school year.

Source: School districts