Pretty much what I expected
3rd Graders in Poor Areas Bear the Brunt of Promotion Rules
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and ELISSA GOOTMAN
Results of the citywide third-grade exams show that in the city's lowest-performing school districts, as many as a third of the eligible students failed to meet the cutoff for promotion to the fourth grade. In District 5 in Harlem and in District 16 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, one in three children subject to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's new third-grade promotion rules now face the prospect of repeating third grade and have been urged to attend summer school.
More than one in four children subject to the promotion policy similarly failed in Districts 7, 9 and 12 in the Bronx and in Districts 13, 17 and 19 in Brooklyn, according to the results. The data, released yesterday, suggested that children in impoverished, predominantly black neighborhoods were likely to be most affected by the mayor's plan.
The promotion policy calls for any third grader scoring at Level 1, the lowest of four rankings, on either the annual reading or math tests to be referred to summer school. Any student who does not score at Level 2 or higher after retaking the test in August or who does not win an appeal will have to repeat the third grade.
In all, slightly more than 17 percent of the 63,072 third graders citywide who are subject to the policy scored at Level 1 on one or both tests. More than 6,300 special education students and more than 2,300 students who do not speak English were exempt from the mayor's policy; promotion decisions for them will be based on other criteria.
