ST. LOUIS (AP) - The St. Louis school system plans to crack down the advancement of unprepared students to the next grade after a critical state audit highlighted the district's overreliance on the practice known as social promotion.
The September report by Missouri Auditor Tom Schweich found the city school system in violation of a state law requiring students to be held back a year if their reading levels are below grade level.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Monday that parents of struggling students will now be alerted earlier to the need for improvement and asked to send their children to summer school. The district will also require standard reading assessments in middle and elementary schools.
Roughly 2,000 elementary and middle school students in city public schools earn the lowest possible score on state reading exams annually. This year, fewer than 7 percent were held back.
"The district is assuring that the policy of the district approved two years ago is fully implemented," Superintendent Kelvin Adams said, referring to a policy that spells out the skills students at each grade level must master. "Will that result in more kids being held back? The answer may be yes."
One state law applying only to St. Louis Public Schools requires the district to not promote any student whose reading level is more than one year behind. Another law applying to all schools in the state prohibits fourth-graders from advancing to fifth grade if they are reading below a third-grade level.
Test results from the 2013 Missouri Assessment Program show that 5,437 fourth-graders across Missouri - about 8 percent - scored the lowest possible level of "below basic" in the reading section. Yet only 224 fourth-graders statewide were held back this year, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
In the St. Louis area, 1,897 fourth-graders scored below basic on the state's reading exam. Just 60 were forced to repeat fourth grade this fall, according to state retention data. No students at any grade level were held back at 274 area schools.
Those schools include four of the five elementary schools in the unaccredited Normandy School District, and at two of the nine elementary schools in the unaccredited Riverview Gardens School District, where the vast majority of students are behind in reading.
In St. Louis, no students were retained at 18 of the district's 46 elementary schools. At three of the city elementary schools with no retained students - Dunbar, Monroe and Walbridge elementary schools- half or more students tested below basic last spring in reading.