Several hundred more eighth grade students will not move on to high school this year than did the year before, under the Department of Education’s retention policy.
Applied to eighth graders in the spring of last year, the retention policy calls for students who have scored below a Level 2 on the state math and English exams to repeat a grade level. The same policy was put in place for students in grades three, five, and seven in 2004 and is now being proposed for grades four and six.
The difference between last year’s eighth grade retention numbers and this year’s numbers comes to a little under 300 students, a modest increase the DOE credits to the very few eighth graders who scored below a Level 2 this year.
Number of students retained as of August 31
3rd grade: 480 of 59,710 retained (0.8%), compared to 864 of 57,463 last year (1.5%)
5th grade: 188 of 57,857 retained (0.3%), compared to 343 of 56,424 last year (0.6%)
7th grade: 339 of 58,510 retained (0.6%), compared to 811 of 59,363 last year (1.4%)
8th grade: 915 of 62,946 retained (1.5%), compared to 633 of 61,301 last year (1.0%), when the promotion policy was not yet in effect.