In Baltimore middle schools, you can still see a few sixth-graders with beards. And students repeating the ninth grade are stacked like cordwood in several city high schools.
But in Baltimore and elsewhere in Maryland, it's becoming impossible to fail a grade in elementary school.
Spurred by the Maryland school reform program, which for four years has made an elementary school's promotion rate one of the criteria for judging its performance, Maryland's 24 districts are now reporting that they "retain" -- the polite word for failing -- almost no one.
Baltimore's promotion rate rose from 91 percent to 97 percent -- in the "satisfactory" range -- after the standard was established in 1990. Two districts, Cecil and Worces- ter, say they promote all students. Promotion percentages in all 24 districts are in the high 90s.
The development has prompted some teachers to complain that the schools are pushing students through school who can't do the work -- and the state schools superintendent to question the validity of using promotion rates to judge a school's effectiveness.
"Just because we're promoting more children doesn't mean more children are doing better," said Susan Costello, an English teacher at Dumbarton Middle School in Baltimore County.
"We may have made a mistake [when the state developed the standards five years ago]," said Dr. Nancy S. Grasmick, state superintendent of schools. "We'll look at it closely. The promotion standard does seem to be aberrant with the notion of setting academic standards and requiring students to meet them."
The state will not use promotion as a criterion for rating a school in the second year of its effort to "reconstitute" failing schools, Dr. Grasmick said. She also said there were problems with the "purity" of some of the statistics.
Dr. Maurice B. Howard, assistant superintendent for instruction in Baltimore, said local officials recognized early on that the promotion rate was "one variable that could be manipulated, and virtually everysystem in Maryland has manipulated it."
Principals and teachers, however, say promotion, while it may not be as widespread as the statistics suggest, is the rule -- and retention is increasingly the exception -- across Maryland.
Educators say most research shows that holding students back a grade increases the chances they'll drop out. Dr. Nancy L. Karweit, a Johns Hopkins researcher who has studied retention, says the retained student is more likely to be male, to be younger than his or her classmates, to be poorer, to be black or Hispanic, to be a behavior problem and to be immature.
Promotion favored
Baltimore Superintendent Walter G. Amprey and his counterpart Baltimore County, Dr. Stuart D. Berger, both opt for promotion except in extreme cases. "We understand now a lot about how people develop and grow," said Dr. Amprey, "so if a person is psychologically deprived because he's held back, that becomes another barrier to his achieving academically."
"I'm totally opposed to retention," said Dr. Berger. If students fail, it's as much the fault of the school as the student, he said. "If we fail, retaining the kid is not the answer."
Yet none of the districts forbids retention. Baltimore County's written policy statement is typical of others. It requires the schools to take 10 factors into account before considering retention, including emotional maturity, age and "uniqueness." A decision to retain is made mutually by parents and educators.
Some teachers say they feel caught in the middle on the promotion issue. If they promote a student who clearly should be held back, they are dumping a problem in a colleague's classroom. If they retain a student, said Karl Kirby Pence, president of the Maryland State Teachers Association, "they feel pressure to make sure that they aren't just repeating the same material for a student. That doesn't make sense."
Pressure to promote
Teachers also report pressures to promote. "In both the schools where I've taught, I have sat in faculty meetings at which I've been told they didn't want any 15-year-olds in school, and kids are to be promoted whether or not they deserve it," said Karen Basile, who teaches at Bennett Middle School in Salisbury. "It ought to be up to us, not the powers that be, whether to promote or retain."
Michael Bond, an Arbutus Middle School teacher in Baltimore County, has a unique perspective: He failed the fourth grade himself. "It hurt, but it paid off," he said. "They made the right choice. I was able to fit in better." Mr. Bond said that when he misbehaved in the fourth grade the second time around, his teacher would ask, "Do you want to fail fourth grade again?"
Johns Hopkins' Dr. Karweit believes the schools could achieve the twin goals of promoting students and helping them academically if they practiced what amounts to probationary promotion -- moving students along but providing remediation while they're in the new grade.
Logjam among teen-agers
Baltimore used to retain many more students than it does in the 1990s, officials said, but the cumulative effect of earlier retentions combined with the high rate of mobility -- students move from school to school and often are put back a grade -- has created a logjam among teen-agers. When they enter middle school, according to system records, a third of city students are considerably older than others in their grade.
At the secondary level, where promotion rates aren't counted by the state in calculating school effectiveness, the Baltimore citywide retention rate is 28 percent. And in the ninth grade at zoned city high schools (as opposed to "citywide" schools with entrance standards), the retention rate is as high as 50 percent. Comparisons with suburban districts are difficult because different criteria are used in the high schools for promotion. A Baltimore County official said retention beyond the fifth grade is "somewhat more common" than at the elementary level.
Seventh grade most difficult
"I have one in the eighth grade who cannot read and has an IQ of 72," said Ms. Costello, of Dumbarton Middle. "That's too high for special education. He's our dilemma this year. He doesn't get a lot of support at home. We don't really have a program for him. What grade should I give him? He'll probably pass. What good would it do to retain him? He needs one-on-one tutoring, but in a class of 24 he's in limbo, and he probably always has been."
Ms. Costello, who is active in the Teachers Association of Baltimore County, said social promotion "isn't something you can pin on Dr. Berger," the county's controversial superintendent. "I've seen it more and more since the state started counting promotions."
"From the seventh to the eighth is when the rubber meets the road," said Sheila Kolman, principal of West Baltimore Middle School. "We find the seventh-grader has the most difficult adjustment. That's the year when they think they know it all."
Baltimore's Dr. Howard noted that the city school board, acting on complaints from several parents, has lowered the minimum ** high school passing grade from 70 to 60, retroactive to last summer. This may have the effect of increasing the promotion rate, he said.
Dr. Howard said he remembered a time when there were 21-year-old eighth-graders, so strict were the schools in retaining students.
Adjustment important
But schools no longer fail students more than two years, the philosophy being that social adjustment is just as important to a student as academic progress.
In an effort to make sure students who have been retained more than once are brought up to par, Baltimore's Booker T. Washington Middle School has engaged two women from the University of Maryland School of Social Work to work with the 43 students who are at least two years older than their fellow students.
Referring to the term "social promotion," which educators have used for decades to describe the moving along of students whether or not they master subject matter, Baltimore Superintendent Amprey said, "I was in Baltimore County for years, and goodness knows we always socially promoted kids. We also socially retained them."