TUSD Teacher’s Op Ed on Social Promotion

by David Safier

This falls into the “Damn, I wish I wrote that!” category. Nancy McCallion, a third grade teacher in Tucson, published a terrific op ed in today’s Star: Fight social promotion with aides in classroom.

Here’s the passage that’s worth the price of admission:

Teachers promote students because they don’t think retention will help them succeed.

Retained students are returned to the same course of study in the same traditional classroom environment that was unable to meet their needs in the first place.

Failing students are failing for a reason. Be it because of learning disabilities or emotional or behavioral problems, they are unable to succeed in the crowded, traditional classroom.

What we need here is not legislation to force teachers to retain students, nor more high paid accountability experts to conduct lengthy and expensive studies.

What we need are warm bodies in the classrooms: aides to monitor one group of students while teachers work with struggling students; tutors to provide one-on-one help for students who are too distracted to focus in a large group setting; high school students in need of community service to listen to a struggling reader.

I was talking about the op ed with a friend this morning, a recently retired art and math teacher. He said he had a math class with two adult volunteers and a special ed aide to help with some special needs kids. “We may not have gotten everyone up to speed,” he said, “but everyone who needed help got it.”

Here is the final sentence of the op ed, for those people who wonder where we can possibly find the money for all those teacher’s aides.

Perhaps the Star could do some research on how many $10-an-hour teachers’ aides could be hired with what we pay out to accountability departments and standardized testing companies.

Amen.