Overage Students Need More Help

By Tonyaa Weathersbee

Unless you’re the teacher, being the oldest person in your sixth- grade class doesn’t put you in charge. More than likely, it puts you on the defensive.

Yet, that’s the situation for scores of Duval County students who are growing out of their clothes, but not out of their elementary and middle school classes.

Of the 124,000 students in the county’s classrooms, 12,000, almost 10 percent, are overage. Youths who are old enough to be high school juniors are struggling to make it out of the eighth grade, while 11-year-olds sit in desks alongside 14-year-olds who are stuck in the sixth grade.

School officials say that chronic absenteeism and discipline problems — issues that are usually fueled by adult struggles and hopelessness that sap students’ motivation and blur the connection between school and a better life — often lead to multiple retentions. But now, some also admit that a stringent promotional policy may also be part of the problem.

Two years ago, Duval County began requiring that all students in the third through 10th grades who score at the lowest reading level of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test be held back. That contrasts with state requirements that third-graders who score at those levels be retained, and that once students make it to high school, they have to pass the reading and math portions of the FCAT to get a diploma.

But the district’s piling-on has led to one in five students repeating a grade this year. And that would lead to more students dropping out of school. But they’ll cease to be the school system’s problems and become society’s problems.

They’ll be costly problems, too.

Many of the inmates who are filling the nation’s prisons and jails are high school dropouts. But fewer people would be filling state Medicaid rolls and blowing up expenses for the uninsured if more youths graduated from high school. That comes from research by the Alliance for Excellent Education, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that focuses on improving postsecondary education and tamping down dropout rates,

People who are better educated are more likely to have a job that provides some form of health coverage. On top of that, they tend to be more able to follow a physician’s instructions and to take charge of their health.

If the 1.2 million students who are estimated to drop out of school this year hung in there and earned their diplomas, states could save more than $17 billion in medical expenses over the course of their lives, according to the alliance. Florida alone would save more than $1.4 billion.

High school dropouts also add little to the state or national economy. If the students who dropped out of the Class of 2006 had graduated, the nation would have seen an additional $309 billion over their lifetimes, alliance research shows.

Florida would have seen its coffers swell by more than $24 billion.

Those numbers, as well as deeper, humanitarian reasons, all point to why it’s crucial that this issue of repeat retentions not be distorted as some kind of covert agenda to restore social promotions. It isn’t.

But the school district is wise to consider dumping its retention policy because it seems to be fostering stigmas. If students didn’t learn enough to get through the sixth grade the first time, chances are they’ll have a tougher time learning two or three years later with children who are three years younger than them.

What the district’s policy misses is the fact that school isn’t just a place for academics, but for socialization. And if a kid is beaten down by the social stigma of being repeatedly held back, chances are he’ll have a hard time getting fired up for the academic part.

That’s why I like the idea of the Renaissance Academy. Sylvia Johnson, principal of Eugene Butler Middle School, is working with the School Board on plans for the school-within-a-school — where overage students will get to work at their own pace without the awkwardness of being the oldest kid in the classroom. Hopefully, they’ll do well enough to be promoted to the next grade.

Maybe the academy will help people understand that when it comes to educating struggling youths, success is about inspiring them to graduate, not humiliating them into dropping out.

Because when those students don’t live up to their potential, one way or the other, everyone else pays.tonyaa.weathersbee@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4251. Hear Tonyaa’s podcasts on www.jacksonville.com. Click on Multimedia.

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