Horne Answers Post: “News Flash: Horne Says OK to More Dropouts”

by David Safier

Yesterday I wrote a question to Tom Horne during a live chat on the Star website. His answer, I wrote in a post, gave me the impression that he is OK with the idea that more students will drop out if we end social promotion.

Horne disagrees with my conclusion. He put a comment on the post saying I should have added another question-and-answer to clarify his position.

I’m delighted Horne chose to respond, and I will quote his response in its entirety. But first, let me put up the Q&A that led to my conclusion:

David S (daves): Aren’t you concerned about the potential for raising the dropout rate if we hold students back on a regular basis? The Star article mentioned that as a probable outcome.

Tom H (tomhorneaz): No. It doesn’t do any good to keep students in school if they aren’t learning. Fear of dropouts is sometimes used as an excuse for mediocrity. I categorically reject that.

Here is Horne’s comment:

To put the answer you quote in context, you should include the following additional question and answer:

Georgia B (gcb1): What are your proposals for the motivation of those students who for whatever reason refuse to improve in performance and become dropouts of no economic worth to our state?

Tom H (tomhorneaz): We have been studying ways to motivate these students. Please look at our website under dropout prevention. We have a list of Arizona programs that have shown success

Saying that fear of dropouts is not a reason to dumb down everyone’s curriculum is not to say I haven’t worked hard to reduce the dropout rate. I created a position for a dropout prevention specialist that didn’t exist when I took office, and she visited schools and prepared a study of best practices in dropout prevention that all schools can imitate. It is on our website http://www.ade.az.gov/asd/dropout/AZModelsofEffectiveStrategiesApp.pdf.

(Note: the URL Horne gave didn’t work for me. I believe you can find the material he’s referring to here, on the Department of Ed’s Dropout Prevention web page.)

Saying the Dept of Ed has studied ways to prevent dropouts is a pretty passive response. To say he has put the results on his website so schools can imitate the “best practices” takes passivity right to the edge of inertia.

I read this to mean, Horne’s first response is “Throw the bums out if they can’t cut it!” Then he says, “Oh, by the way, I have a little pamphlet here with some ‘best practices’ to stop these kids from dropping out.” I’m not convinced he’s as serious about dropout prevention as he is about his beloved high stakes standardized testing program.

I went through the text of the chat again, and the only mention of dropouts is in the two quotations above. But here are a number of other statements by Horne which add to my impression that he thinks we should stop social promotion first and worry about the consequences later.

“I have been strongly opposed to social promotion for 30 years, going back to my first years on a school board.”

“Once the public is used to the High School test that students need to pass to graduate, I support extending this to earlier grades. For example, in Louisianna, they must pass in 3rd and 8tgh grade, to go on to the next grade, and that works well. I believe we need that, or something like it, in Arizona.”

“I favor holding back children who have not learned enough to go on to the next grade. It is also a good idea to let the student and the parents know (not necessarily in the first couple of months, but, say, by midyear) that if the learning does not improve, being held back may result.”

“Donya M (justasiam): Why do we have social promotion at all?
Tom H (tomhorneaz): It was taught in schools of education because studies showed that students held back did worse in the long run. In my opinion, that misses the point. If you allow social promotion, you lower the motivation and standards of learning for the entire school. This is one of four theories taught in schools of education which I believe have done a lot of damage. The other three are bilingual education, whole language reading, and heterogenious grouping.”

The last quote is my favorite. Horne links the “bad idea” of social promotion with other “bad ideas,” two of which are whole language reading and bilingual education. As I wrote in earlier posts, the U.S. Dept. of Ed’s recent study concluded that students in the $6 billion dollar phonics-based Reading First classrooms performed the same on tests as those who were in other classrooms. And the most recent research on bilingual vs. English Immersion strategies for ELL students also showed no difference in achievement — except in Arizona, where, for some reason, achievement curved downward. So if we judge the value of Horne’s view on social promotion by the company it keeps, it doesn’t look very promising.