The proportion of overage students — those who have been held back for at least one grade — hovers around 40 percent for New Orleans high school students.

Forty-six percent of twelfth-graders were at least one year older than their peers.

Interviews with students and experts and data gathered for this story suggest that the instability after Hurricane Katrina contributed to the problem, but the crisis is also partly man-made. For years, Louisiana has been a national leader in the movement to end “social promotion,” or the practice of moving children up through the grades, regardless of their academic achievement. The state enforced strict policies to retain children who failed high stakes tests, ballooning the ranks of those who were held back.

Now, after realizing that academic stragglers who were retained frequently didn’t receive the support they needed, the state is changing course.

Three years ago, the state piloted a program called “transitional ninth grade” that moved students who had failed eighth grade to high-school campuses where they could take a mix of courses, some at-grade-level and some remedial.

In December 2017, the state released guidance to explain how to institute alternatives to retention in fourth grade.

Read the full article on students who are held back by Katy Reckdahl at The Hechinger Report