Have we terrified Georgia students by threatening to hold them back if they don’t pass state tests?
Yes, says a DeKalb parent, who argues on the AJC Get Schooled blog that we are lying to students since very few kids are held back due to poor performance on the Georgia Milestones tests.
State law says students who don’t pass the exams in third, fifth and eighth grade can be held back. However, it rarely occurs, according to AJC analyses of retention data.
“The truth is that failing the Milestones means the opportunity to get extra help during the summer and then a retest. The truth is that parents have the right to appeal retention, and in that case a committee meets to determine what is best for the child. The truth is that retaining students in grades three and higher is rare. The vast majority get to move on,” says parent Patti Ghezzi.
Ghezzi says the lie of automatic retention likely got started as a way to scare kids into working hard and taking the test seriously, but she’s witnessed the opposite. “Several of my child’s friends were stressed out to the point of illness and emotional distress. Yet these children are good students who were never in any danger of retention,” she says.
To read more, go to the AJC Get Schooled blog.
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