"We took definitive action," Clayton said. "We tried to deal with this. . . . Social promotion is untenable.

"This has not been going on for decades," she said Friday, adding that Ackerman should know that her predecessors had worked to stop the practice.

Clayton's new policy called for students in grades first through eighth to pass subject areas before they could pass the grade.

Promoting students who are not competent, she said, shortchanges them, the city, and the nation.

"People said, 'They will be damaged when they don't move forward,' " Clayton recalled. "But then you find ways in which they can succeed. . . . Children do not all learn in the same way or at the same rate."

Her administration brought back summer school. "Instead of leaving children behind," she said, "it gave them an opportunity to catch up."

She said she had no idea when the district moved away from her policies.

Despite Clayton's efforts and those of her successor, David Hornbeck, social promotion was still in practice when Paul Vallas arrived in 2002 from Chicago.

"It was not as ingrained in Philadelphia as it was in Chicago," recalled Vallas, who left Philadelphia in 2007 and now heads the Recovery School District in New Orleans.

He said the threat of being retained in grade helped persuade most students to attend class and complete assignments.

"It raises standards and puts everybody under pressure to work harder," he said, adding that special interventions were needed to help the others.

In addition to implementing new promotion standards, the district under Vallas expanded alternative-learning programs to help older students who were years behind.

"When I came to Philadelphia, we had 3,000 kids who had reached the age of 16 and had not graduated from eighth grade," he said. "You need to provide special avenues for advancement for kids who otherwise would not make it in a traditional environment."

But former teachers said they still were pressured to pass.

"They just stopped using the words social promotion," said one former teacher who taught a variety of subjects during his 36-year career with the district. "No matter what school it was, the administrators would come around in June and say, 'Could you pass this student?' "

Bearn, the former reading specialist, said that during the early 1980s, she had been directed to pass a middle school student who never arrived at school in time to attend her first-period class.

"The vice principal told me to give him extra work, and I was told to pass him," she said. "I'm sure I was not alone."

Responsibility shift

Current teachers say there has been a subtle but definite shift in recent years. Students used to be responsible for showing up prepared, learning the material, and passing. Now, the teachers say, it's their responsibility to make sure students pass.

"Even with principals who are reasonable and not on a witch-hunt and not calling you on the carpet for everything, it's just the system now," said Lisa Haver, a sixth-grade teacher at Harding Middle School in Frankford. "If you're having too many kids who fail, the question is, 'What are you doing wrong?' "

Failing students are offered an array of ways to pass classes, including summer school, packets of makeup work, and "credit recovery," an abbreviated after-school program.