By Ana Beatriz Cholo
Tribune staff reporter
March 14, 2003
A summer-school program designed to help end social
promotions in Chicago's public schools benefited pupils in the short term, but
the progress did not continue during the year, a study by the Consortium on
Chicago School Research found.
Many pupils made more significant gains in six weeks of summer school than in an
entire school year, according to the study's authors.
But the experience was not "transformative," said lead author
Melissa Roderick, and the positive results did not typically carry on into the
regular school year. Two years after they participated in the program, the
pupils did not perform any better on standardized tests than similar pupils who
did not attend the program.
Although only about half of the pupils who attended the program were promoted to
the next grade, smaller class sizes and more focused instruction helped the
pupils significantly increase their test scores, regardless of how far behind
they were.
The summer program, the study found, allowed pupils to proceed at a slower pace
that matched their understanding of any given topic.
Pupils told Roderick that the classes were different from their regular classes
because, "If you don't get it, [the teacher] will explain it to you over and
over and over again."
Donald Moore, executive director of the parent advocacy group Designs for
Change, criticized the study as an "incomplete and misleading analysis."
He said the study did not analyze the long-term effects of the program on the
approximately 10,000 pupils who were held back and that the analysis does not
show a lasting benefit to pupils who passed the test in the summer and were
promoted.
The study may provide fodder for critics. Last year, 13,308 pupils were held
back a grade--the largest number since Mayor Richard Daley's 1996 plan to end
social promotion. The study was not an evaluation of retention rates, the
subject of another report in progress.
The study, the third in a series of five reports examining the school district's
social promotions policy, looked at the Summer Bridge program between 1997 and
2000.
The program was instituted in 1996 for pupils in the 3rd, 6th and 8th grades who
did not meet minimum test scores on the Iowa Basic Skills Test. Those pupils
retake the test at the end of the summer session. If they do not make the
minimum score, they can be retained.
According to the report, the average 8th-grade pupil increased his Iowa test
scores by six months within the six-week summer program. Out of the three
grades, the 8th graders showed the largest gains. Third graders showed the
lowest test score gains, with an average of about three months of progress.
Eighty percent of the pupils said they like summer school better than regular
school and said their teacher, in most cases the same teacher who taught them
during the regular school year, gave them more individualized attention.
Researchers spent 144 days watching teachers and pupils interact in classrooms.
They used data drawn from achievement test scores, surveys and pupil and teacher
interviews.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune