The Bloomberg administration won approval for a new eighth-grade promotion policy last night at a meeting repeatedly interrupted by the chanting and heckling of parents who contend that the policy amounts to blaming students for the failings of the city’s middle schools.
The policy requires next year’s eighth graders to pass classes in core subject areas and to score at a basic level on standardized English and math exams to be promoted. The Panel for Educational Policy, which oversees the city schools, approved the policy by a vote of 11 to 1 in its meeting at Tweed Courthouse, the Education Department’s headquarters. Eight of the 13 members on the panel — there is one vacancy — are appointed by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, and the five borough presidents appoint one each.
From the moment the meeting began, it was punctuated by parents chanting, “Postpone the vote” and “No plan, no vote,” a reference to what they said was the department’s lack of a comprehensive plan for fixing the city’s middle schools.
After the vote, the chants grew louder, culminating in shouts of “Shame! Shame!” that were accompanied by wagging fingers. The meeting was adjourned, with other items on the agenda pushed off to next month’s meeting. Parents continued their protests outside the building while Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein met with reporters to defend the policy.
“In the end, passing kids through the system without making sure they’re ready for the next grade level is not a formula for success,” he said. “Our job is not to move a kid out of middle school; our job is to move a kid from middle school to high school, prepared for high school.”
Mr. Klein said he believed there was “widespread support throughout the city for the policy.”
But parents and education advocates, who held a news conference protesting the measure on the steps of the courthouse before the meeting, disagreed.
Ken Cohen, the N.A.A.C.P. regional director for New York City, called on the panel to postpone the vote, based on what he said was widespread disapproval of the policy. “Today we are here to see how this body reacts to the voice of the people,” he said. “This is not their government; it is our government. Let the people speak.”
When the mayor four years ago announced strict new promotion criteria for third graders in an effort to end social promotion, in which children are passed along to the next grade even when they are academically unprepared, he ushered in one of the stormiest episodes of his mayoralty.
Parents and politicians balked, and the policy was approved only after the mayor fired two panel members who had opposed it; the Staten Island borough president fired a third.
Subsequent promotion policies for fifth and seventh graders generated far less opposition. That was in large measure because the policies have resulted in fewer students being held back than before, with some improving their test scores after summer school programs, and others winning promotion through an appeals process.
But the eighth-grade policy has once again hit a nerve.
It landed in the middle of a raging debate about what is wrong with the city’s middle schools, and how to fix them. The debate gained momentum this fall, when federal test scores showed that city eighth graders had made no significant progress in reading and math since Mr. Bloomberg took control of city schools in 2002. State tests, though, have shown city students making gains over the same period.
One of the key criticisms of grade retention policies is that they demoralize students to the point that they may be more likely to drop out. Some parents say this could be a particularly acute problem for eighth graders who are told they cannot advance to high school.
The eighth-grade proposal could also affect more students; last year, officials said, 17,974 eighth graders received the lowest possible scores on their English or math exams or failed a core course, but only 1,300 were held back.
Patrick J. Sullivan, the Manhattan borough president’s appointee to the panel and the lone dissenter, said the number of low-performing eighth graders raised questions about the effectiveness of the mayor’s retention policies in the earlier grades.
“There’s no reason to wait for kids to fail and then keep them in the same environment for another useless year,” he said.
But Edison O. Jackson, a panel member who is the president of Medgar Evers College, called the effort a “step in the right direction,” saying that too many students require an extra year of remediation before they can move on to college-level coursework.
Zakiyah Ansari, a Brooklyn parent who is part of the Coalition for Educational Justice, a group that organized the news conference, said the policy punished children for “things they really don’t have any control over.”
She added, “I don’t think anybody really understands the need and the crisis that’s really going on in middle schools.”
