Fountain Valley district retains fewest students

Angelique Flores

FOUNTAIN VALLEY -- Fountain Valley School District is doing something

right.

Sixty-one students, less than 1% of the population, were identified as

being at risk of not meeting promotion standards at the beginning of the

1999-00 school year. Twelve of them will repeat a grade in the district

next school year.

“I was surprised that it was that low,” Supt. Marc Ecker said. “I

thought that it would be more.”

Of the 12 students retained, two appealed. However, both appeals were

denied.

Huntington Beach City School District held back 40 students, or 0.5%

of its population. Ocean View School District retained 604 students, or

6% of the population.

Though Ocean View had a significantly higher number of retained

students, 244 of those students were from Oak View Elementary School,

where 98% to 99% of the students are English language learners.

“Giving them this extra time will help them to compete later on,

especially the English language learner,” said Karen Colby, the

district’s superintendent of curriculum and instruction.

Besides the low number of those retained, Fountain Valley district

officials are pleased that none of those retained were in the eighth

grade.

“The eighth-graders went into summer school quite seriously,” Ecker

said. “They wanted to move on.”

Other local districts evaluated students for retention at the end of

the school year. If the students weren’t ready after 10 months of

intervention, those district officials said they wouldn’t be ready to

move on after 19 days of summer school.

“It would be an unfair pressure to put on summer school teachers and

the students,” Colby said.

However, the Fountain Valley district waited until after summer school

to make final decisions.

The district gave students another opportunity to catch up and avoid

retention by administering the district’s benchmark exam at the end of

the summer school session.

Teachers evaluate a student’s grades, Stanford 9 test score and

benchmark exam score to determine whether the student should be promoted.

Students who scored at least 70% on the benchmark exam were promoted to

the next grade.

“We provide a second chance,” Ecker said.

Ecker also said the district spent a lot of time and energy on

remedial and intervention programs, which he said had an effect on

lowering the number.

“Students at risk must have the opportunity of intervention,” Ecker

said. “Simply retaining students isn’t going to make a difference.

Intervening makes a difference. I look less on the numbers being retained

and more on intervention we provided.”