Promotions and Holdovers

The New York City Board of Education officially changed its policy in September 1999 regarding how it would evaluate whether a child would be promoted to the next grade. Children at-risk will be required to go to summer school and then pass a test in the child's problem area(s) before they can be promoted to the next grade. This new policy affects children from the 3rd grade upward and is likely to lead to an exponential increase in the number of children held back. The change occurred by revising Chancellor's Regulation A-501. AFC has done an analysis comparing the old regulation to the new. Many rights of parents and children were cut out in the new regulation, including the removal of mandatory parental notification of the child's at-risk for holdover status and the elimination of the requirement to provide enrichment services for at-risk children. For more detailed information regarding the changes in promotional policy, please see the AFC report "Analysis of the Board of Education's Change of Policy Regarding the Retention of Students," available in either html or Word format.

The Board estimates that approximately 300,000, or one quarter of NYC's school population, will be attending summer school in June 2000, largely as a result of this new policy. This is based on the Board's belief that retention of children will help them academically. Unfortunately educational studies in the last 25 years clearly demonstrate that retention not only does not benefit children educationally but raises the likelihood of children dropping out of school. AFC has written a report entitled "An Overview of National Research on the Effectiveness of Retention on Student Achievement," (available in html or Word format) providing an overview of the research results nationally illustrating how retention leads to reduced achievement and higher dropout rates.

back to Information and Resources