The first year, 65 percent of the academy students moved on to 10th grade without a hitch. Last year, the number was 80 percent. The program is successful, says Brady, a teacher at the mainstream high school, because it provides students with a realistic hope of catching up, as well as rewards for good grades and behavior.

 

One such reward is getting to eat lunch with the regular high school students.

 

The San Diego Unified School District is proposing a similar plan that will likely go before the school board this month. As it stands now, eighth-graders with as many as four F's in core classes are getting promoted. Under the proposal, students with F's in two or more core classes would spend a year at an alternative school where they would make up lost course work and earn high school credits. If they earn enough credits, they would have the opportunity to rejoin their class. Otherwise, they would move on to the ninth grade.

 

The district describes it as neither retention nor social promotion, rather an opportunity for students to catch up and graduate on time.

 

In Simi Valley, middle school students tried harder when the school mandated that they earn credits toward graduation, similar to high school students, says Bonnie Carolan, a teacher at Valley View Middle School. Several years ago, however, parents complained that the system was too strict and petitioned the school board to "lighten up" on its requirements for eighth-graders. When that happened, social promotion took over.

 

"It didn't take the eighth-graders too long to figure out they had to do nothing," says Carolan, a member of the Simi Educators Association.

 

After a few years of frustration - and complaints from high school teachers that middle school students were unprepared - a task force of teachers, counselors and administrators requested that the credit system be reinstated and that failing students be retained. Fearing that middle schools would retain students en masse, the school board has taken a "go slow" approach.

 

"We have told the kids that there are going to be consequences (retentions) and we are seeing kids working harder," says Carolan. "They're coming in for extra help. They're pulling their friends in for extra help because they want their friends to go to high school with them."

 

Parent communication is also much better, she says. "Parents are not just waiting for report cards to come home. They're contacting teachers more often. Positive things have come out of this."

 

Students used to brag about how many classes they had failed before going to high school. "But failing is no longer a badge of honor."

 

Teachers say students are different today and maybe it's time to try new tactics. Some students are turned off to school as a result of "drill and kill" standards-based instruction, a lack of electives, and courses like algebra being "pushed down" to grades where students may not be developmentally ready to tackle it.

 

"Not every student is algebra material," says Jim Jackson, a math teacher at Live Oak Middle School and a member of the Live Oak Teachers Association. "We need to teach them how to balance checkbooks and understand consumer credit." Instead, they get algebra in middle school, fail it, get socially promoted to high school and wind up back in algebra again.

 

It may be time, suggests Jackson, for middle schools to offer vocational education or alternative programs.

 

In the Center Unified School District in Sacramento County, eighth-graders who have been retained can attend the continuation high school. "Our retained students who are not making it at the regular middle school are making it at the continuation school," says Candie Ray, a science, social studies and drama teacher at Wilson C. Riles Middle School and a member of the Center Unified Teachers Association. A midyear intervention program has also been successful.

 

At Ray's school, more seventh-grade students than eighth-graders are being retained. "The number of retentions has gone up fairly dramatically in recent years. Out of 500 seventh-graders, approximately 175 did not pass last year," she says. Many attended summer school and were then promoted to the next grade. Along with core curriculum, students learned organizational and time-management skills during the summer.

 

With retention as a definite possibility, Ray believes, most students at her school site are more motivated. "Most students try harder, but some give up." And then there are the frustrations like the student who didn't meet the requirements to pass seventh grade and is repeating it, but isn't meeting the requirements again. "Should we send him to seventh grade for a third time? Fortunately this is the exception. Most of the ones who are retained usually succeed the second time around."

 

"I think that we, as teachers, need to make a stand," says Carolan in Simi Valley. "We have so many kids not doing the work. It isn't that they can't do the work - they won't. It's not just about academics. Kids need to see that there will be consequences - good or bad - depending upon what they do. They also need to understand that they have responsibilities as human beings and that they will be held accountable for what they do in their lives. As teachers, we need to make them understand that."