Administrators at Carver say that students who enter high school overage feel like they’re wearing a scarlet letter, regardless of why they were retained. “There’s so much shame attached to it. Students constantly tell me, ‘I want to be at my right grade,’” said Jerel Bryant, Carver’s principal. “It’s a huge thing.”
Those doubts and shame are one of the many reasons that overage students are at significant risk of dropping out of school. But in New Orleans, overage students are incredibly common. Nearly 1 in 5 of Crosby’s classmates at Carver are also at least two years overage for their grade. All across the city, the number of students who are significantly older than their classmates is at crisis levels.
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.
Without a doubt, Katrina was a key factor for nearly all of this year’s overage seniors, who were not solely “held back” in the traditional sense. Most students lost months or even years of school time after Katrina hit in 2005. The disaster also spurred prolonged displacement, culture shock, and grief for many, students said that they were left reeling and felt as though they were in a fog. For children who came from New Orleans neighborhoods with high levels of poverty and violence, the storm and its aftermath added yet another layer of trauma.
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