There are 80,000 third graders in New York City. 11,700 of them scored well below grade-level on either their math or English assessment tests. Once all the appealing and the summer schooling is over with, 10,000 of them will probably be held back for another year in third grade. There's lots of controversy about it all, and the New York Times rehearses a lot of it. But the bottom line is that more than 12% of the third graders in New York City can't read, can't do basic math, or can't do either one.

Best to catch problems early, of course. It will take several years for the end of social-promoting 3rd graders to impact high schools. If they stand their ground, this should be a huge improvement.

Given the comments on your last post, I'm sure the solution for most will be to pay NYC teachers less instead of expecting NYC parents to do more ...

It's obvious that New York desperately needs more school funding. These children are clearly not receiving enough diversity or sensitivity counselling.

I think, pace mud blood and beer, the a combination is in order. Teachers cannot do it all and parents have to do some as well, but to arbitrarily say that the fault is only with the parents is really not necessarily true. I know that I was lucky in most of my teachers but I did have a couple of real stinkers growing up and believe me when I tell you that nothing my parents did would get past those stupid teachers. They were total cyphers and a real waste of air as far as teaching goes. The problem is that at this point we don't know the full extent of where the blame lies. Until we do then the teachers should not expect their automatic raises to kick in. Why give people raises for not doing their work and we really can't say whether the problem is their not doing the work or not. I wouldn't pay them less, but I also wouldn't pay them any more at all at this time.

It's best when parents do their part, of course. But by the end of third grade, schoolteachers should have been able to teach a kid of normal intelligence to read, regardless.