SOCIAL PROMOTION EXTENDED; LAUSD BLAMES ISSUE'S COMPLEXITY, WILL FOCUS ON ONLY TWO GRADES.

Byline: David R. Baker Staff Writer

The Los Angeles school system will delay much of its effort to end social promotion next year, holding back underperforming students in just two grades instead of the five originally planned, district officials said Tuesday.

The other grades will be phased in the following year, part of a four-year rollout of the high-stakes program.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials blamed the delay on the effort's daunting complexity and the difficulty of finding extra classroom space for students not allowed to move on to the next grade level.

Several insisted they had not gutted the program, seen by many as the district's most important educational reform.

``If anything, we've strengthened our commitment to standards-based promotion by promising to do it right,'' said school board member Caprice Young.

Board member David Tokofsky, however, worried that the program had lost some of its teeth, especially when compared to the 1998 state law that spawned it.

He said that in the program's initial year, the decision to retain a student will rest primarily on a teacher's recommendation, not on test scores or other objective measures. The statewide Stanford 9 test, for example, won't be used to help determine a student's promotion or retention until the program's third year.

``Why not pick an absolute number where judgment will not involve itself?'' Tokofsky said. ``The basic reason for the law is subverted.''

As detailed in a report issued Tuesday by incoming superintendent Ramon Cortines, students in grades two and eight who are not performing up to par by the end of this school year may be held back. They will not repeat the grade level they just failed - instead, they will be shunted into special classes for a year, where they will work on basic skills while studying much of what they would have learned in the next grade level.

``We have to keep them up to speed, because they have to be ready to go on to the next grade the next year,'' said Carmen Schroeder, associate superintendent for the district's division of instruction.

All underperforming students will have one last chance to avoid retention by attending summer school, she said.

The district originally hoped to hold back students in grades three, four and five as well this school year. Now those grades will be added at the end of the 2000-2001 school year. Struggling students in those grades will receive after-school and weekend tutoring this year.

Although the new state law ordered school districts to end social promotion in all of those grades, it did not give a date by which districts must make the change. Los Angeles school district officials said they did not expect the state to object to their program's delayed implementation, and a California Department of Education specialist on social promotion said the law was unclear on that point.

``You'd need to ask a lawyer on that,'' said Cathy George, a consultant to the department.

By focusing on just two grades the first year, district officials will buy time to train more teachers and find the classroom space they need to make the effort work.

Whereas the district has said that 90,000 students in all of the originally affected grades were in danger of being held back - even after attending a new series of summer school classes - Schroeder on Tuesday estimated just 17,000 students would be retained.