REMEDIAL PROGRAMS EXPANDED; A.V. ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DISTRICTS RESPOND TO NEW STATE LAW.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

A new state law targeting social promotion has Antelope Valley's two largest elementary school districts refining policies and expanding remedial programs aimed at helping struggling students in danger of being held back.

While districts already were required to have promotion and retention policies in place, the law that took effect in January requires them to specifically address student advancement into grades three, four and five, and to middle school and high school.

``We need to be more precise. We will consider grades and other indicators of achievement,'' said Don Crane, Palmdale's assistant superintendent of pupil personnel services. ``If we look at other indicators such as standardized tests and teacher judgments, we need to make sure we are consistent across the district.''

Both school districts are working on developing the new policies to incorporate the law's dictates and will implement them for the 1999-2000 school year.

The law requires students be held back based on either scores on the statewide Stanford 9 standardized test and minimum performance levels adopted by the state Board of Education, or grades and other indicators of academic achievement designated by the district, according to an Assembly committee analysis.

The state board may only adopt these performance levels once the Stanford 9 test has been ``aligned'' to tests skills required by statewide standards, according to the law.

The law also states that students will be held back unless their teacher determines in writing that retention is not the appropriate intervention and includes recommendations to help them attain acceptable levels of academic achievement, records show.

School district policies also should provide a plan for remedial instruction for students who are at-risk of or recommended for retention.

``Social promotion refers to practices in which districts promote children to the next grade when those children have not mastered current grade level skills,'' the Assembly committee report said.

The American Federation of Teachers surveyed student promotion policies from 85 districts around the country, including the 40 largest districts, the report said.

``The survey found that almost all districts had positions stating that retaining students should be the option of last resort, and half restricted the number of times a student can be retained. Most districts surveyed did not have agreed-upon standards defining what grade-level skills children should know,'' the report said.

Officials at the Lancaster and Palmdale districts said that social promotion would occur if, for example, an older child, age 16, comes into the district and is not achieving academically.

That student would be promoted to high school or an alternate school because it is felt he or she would perform better among students the same age, local officials said.

``We try not to do social promotion,'' said Howard Sundberg, Lancaster's assistant superintendent of educational services.

Statistics indicate that both districts are most likely to hold back students in the early primary grades and in the seventh and eighth grades.

Lancaster School District last year held back 413 students, between 3 and 4 percent of its pupil enrollment. That total included 87 seventh-graders, 80 eighth-graders and 75 kindergartners, Sundberg said.

Palmdale School District had 321 retentions in the 1997-98 school year, according to figures provided by 17 of the district's 21 schools.

There were 41 in kindergarten, 45 in first grade, 25 in second grade, 47 in third grade, four in fourth grade, three in fifth grade, none in sixth grade, 130 in seventh grade and 26 in eighth grade, Crane said.

The two districts' current promotion and retention policies are similar. In primary grades, the principal makes the final decision on whether to retain a student after factors such as grades, physical, emotional and social maturity, and performance in certain subjects is examined.

The policies for seventh- and eighth-graders consider a more concrete factor of grade-point averages. For Lancaster, students who have GPAs lower than 1.83 stay back; for Palmdale, it's lower than 1.5 GPA.

District officials said they plan to help failing students advance to the next grade by expanding intersession and summer school programs, and after-school tutoring sessions.

School officials suspect that retention numbers might rise because the new policies will rely more on specific objective criteria.

Sundberg added that the new law provides leverage for school officials who want parents to send their children to after-school tutors.

``With the new law, we can demand a child take part. If the parent refuses and the kid doesn't do it, we can use that to retain them,'' Sundberg said.

Sundberg said advisories from the state also indicate there may be exceptions in the law that don't eliminate social promotion for certain students, such as children who have limited proficiency in English and special education students.

``We are supposed to provide a program that concentrates on language acquisition (for the limited English proficient student),'' Sundberg said. ``We do it typically for a year, and we may not be diligently looking at math or social studies because they are getting a grasp of English. At the same time, the promotion law says if students don't meet standards, they should be held back. How do you deal with a student learning English when their program does not concentrate on other areas?''