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Children who were forced to repeat 3rd or 6th grade did not show the academic gains expected under Chicago's tough promotions policy, according to the most critical research to date on the district's seven-year-old program.

Despite receiving extra attention and class time, retained 6th-graders improved less in reading than a group of low-achieving peers who weren't held back, according to a report released Tuesday by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago.

The report also found that about a fifth of the retained 3rd and 6th graders ended up in special education within two years. The pupils were placed in special education at rates three to six times higher than for a comparable group of pupils, raising concerns that the children often are labeled inappropriately as disabled.

A separate consortium study found that retaining Chicago students in 8th grade increased the likelihood that these low-achieving students would drop out later, adding to a body of national research showing that retained students are more likely to drop out than others.

However, overall dropout rates in Chicago did not increase after the policy was adopted, as many had feared.

The findings come at a time of increased national attention to Chicago's promotions policy, which requires 3rd, 6th and 8th graders to attend summer school and repeat a grade if they don't perform well enough on a standardized test. New York City last month approved a policy for 3rd graders modeled after Chicago's.

At the same time, Chicago eased some of its promotion standards and increased its focus on providing support to struggling students, partly in anticipation of the critical research.

The researchers were careful to say they are not in favor of social promotion--the practice of sending students to the next grade even if they do not have the necessary skills to succeed. But Chicago's policy, they said, has not been effective.

"Retention the way it is being done now in Chicago is not helping students," said Melissa Roderick, principal investigator for the study on 3rd and 6th graders. An associate professor at the U. of C., Roderick was director of planning under Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan and still works for him as a paid consultant. The study's lead author was Jenny Nagaoka.

"These students are starting school far behind and they continue to fall behind," Roderick said. "Waiting to 3rd or 6th grade to intervene is not a judicious use of resources."

Duncan said he strongly disagreed with the conclusion that the retention policy has not worked.

"Common sense says that ending social promotions contributed to higher test scores and lower dropout rates for the system as a whole," Duncan said. "To disassociate the tremendous progress Chicago has seen since 1995 from the promotions policy is illogical."

Dropout tendency studied

Consortium researcher Elaine Allensworth, who conducted the study on dropout rates, agreed that the district's overall dropout rate has declined. However, she said, 8th graders who are forced to repeat a grade are more likely to leave school than their peers.

Johnny Brooks, 19, is one of those students. He failed 8th grade and dropped out later in high school.

"When I got retained in 8th grade, it just took all the drive out of me," said Brooks. He said it was difficult to watch students who had been in his same grade prepare to graduate in 2003, knowing he couldn't join them.

"I got that feeling like I would never catch up and I just gave up," said Brooks, who returned to an alternative school this school year and is about to graduate.

Duncan stressed that earlier research by the consortium found that the threat of being retained helped motivate 8th-grade students to pay more attention to their schoolwork. The policy also caused parents and teachers to focus more attention on struggling students, earlier research found.

Duncan said he stands firm in forcing students to repeat a grade based on their test scores and other factors, such as classroom grades and attendance. "I am convinced in my heart this is the right thing to do," he said.

Many of the changes in the promotion policy approved by the Chicago Board of Education last month will address problems identified by the consortium researchers, especially the need to intervene with students before 3rd grade, Duncan said.

Starting next fall, the school system promises a diagnostic reading test for all kindergartners to identify struggling students so they can receive extra help. The school district also will be implementing full-day kindergartens and smaller class sizes in grades K-3 in some schools with large numbers of retained students.

Chicago didn't change the reading scores needed to pass, but it did end retentions based solely on math scores. It also ended double promotions, or retaining students twice in the same grade.

Chicago began retaining 8th graders based on their standardized test scores at the end of the 1995-96 school year after Mayor Richard Daley took over the schools. The school system did not begin holding back 3rd and 6th graders until the end of 1996-97. The consortium achievement study looked at 3rd and 6th graders retained at the end of the following three school years.

The report's conclusions were based on comparing two years of performance data on the retained students to a group of similar low-achieving students who were not retained.

Special-education questions

Barbara Eason-Watkins, Chicago's chief education officer, promised the system is addressing the troubling trend of placing students with reading difficulties in special education. Roderick and the other researchers said Tuesday that they suspected many of those special education placements were inappropriate.

"There is little research support for the idea that placement in special education leads to a remediation of students' reading problems, particularly in the upper grades," the report said.

Eason-Watkins and Roderick said they suspected teachers turned to special education placements out of frustration when they did not have the tools to help chronically failing students advance.

"Often, these are students who have learning styles that need different approaches," Eason-Watkins said. "They do not necessarily have learning disabilities."

She said one solution under way is to give teachers more training in how to adapt their instruction for students with learning difficulties.

The latest research has given more fodder to longtime critics of Chicago's social promotions policy. Donald Moore, executive director of Designs for Change, said money spent on giving students extra schooling should be redirected to diagnosis and intervention.

"It's a failed policy," Moore said.

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