As many of us wind down the school year and prepare for summer school, a question comes up. Should this student be retained? Dr. Laura does not believe this is a useful option for most students. According to “The Great Debate Surrounding Grade Retention”, holding a student back does not have a huge benefit with academics or adjustment problems. A student is more likely to drop out of they are retained a year compared to their peers. (Brooks, 2002)
Unfortunately, do to this idea, many student are being socially promoted. This means students are being promoted to the next grade even though they have not met the grade level expectations. According to the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, research has shown that social promotion does not reduce drop-out rates, does not increase student achievement, and produces graduates who lack the skills needed to be employed. (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 2001)
In high schools, students can be required to repeat only the course that was not passed but in elementary school and some middle schools, a student would need to repeat the entire year. Dr. Brooks went to a conference where a speaker said, “It makes no sense to promote students who have failed to learn. It will only lead to more failure down the road. Why promote someone who hasn’t met requirements for promotion?” (Brooks, 2002)
Personally, I agree with this statement. If the student is not prepared for the next grade, then why should they go? I am not saying that all students who do poorly in school should be retained but if all accommodations were made, all options tried, and the student is still not ready for the next grade, then he or she should stay behind.
What do you think? Are there any other options that could be used to help these students to be successful? At what point is retention the best option
Brooks, R. (2002, November). School retention: a common practice but is it effective?. Retrieved from http://www.drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/0211.html
North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. (2001). Critical issue: beyond social promotion and retention—five strategies to help students succeed. Retrieved from http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/atrisk/at800.htm
This is a touchy subject! I am not familiar with elementary schools but I do feel that if a high school student has not passed the class...they should retake the class. I believe the reasons for failure should be addressed. Does he/she need special help or is it a matter of not doing the work? I have often told students that college professors do not care if you fail (I am sure they do but not to the extent high school teachers do) as long as they get paid . Our school system is offering some courses for college credit including a welding program. If the student does not pass the class, the student is responsible for paying the tuition. I think this is a great idea. It teaches real life consequences. Megan Manternach
ReplyDeleteKristen,
ReplyDeleteInteresting post and I have to admit I often wonder about the reasons for social promotion. I had a class of fourth graders this year where 3 or 4 of them were reading at a second grade level and had great difficulty following along in computers due to their reading skills. I thought how sad it must be for them to know they can't read as well as the others. But after reading the Brook's article, I can also see that it would be equally sad for them to be told they have to repeat a grade again. The article mentions the research that shows "...retention at any grade level is associated with later high school dropout, as well as other deleterious long-term effects." I don't doubt that to be a true finding, but could it be that the students may have suffered long-term effects even if they were socially promoted? I would think that retention is just one piece of the puzzle that created a drop-out.
I will say though that we "red-shirted" my daughter academically and it was well worth it. Her birthday was on the cut-off and we could have promoted her to kindergarten but held her in pre-K for another year. Her preschool teacher suggested it, not for the elementary grades, but for middle school years and she was right. At 13, she's taking advanced classes and is doing well socially. While there's no way of knowing what could have happened if we chose the other route, I feel we gave her the extra year to grow a little more. So perhaps those pre-K and Kindergarten teachers might be the ones to promote or retain when children are still young.
Kristen:
ReplyDeleteYou pose a question that I struggled with a great deal when my oldest son was in 1st grade. He was one of the youngest students in his class, and not a good reader, so we did consider holding him back. But at that point, I read all of the research that I could get my hands on and found out then that is was only recommended before 2nd grade! I thought that was unbelievable. I still wonder to this day if my son would have been more successful throughout his academic career if I had chosen to hold him back after 1st grade.
I go back and forth on this issue. Although we need to have grade-level standards, I tend to think that on many occasions kids should be socially promoted. Along with the promotion, however, there should be intensive remediation to improve their skills and close their academic gaps. I have students who are in 9th grade and are reading on a 6th grade level. If there was no social promotion, these 15 year olds would be in 6th grade classrooms. That would never work for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeleteThis is a touchy subject. You really need to look at all options before retention is considered, especially in the upper grades. If all other options/accommodations have been exhausted then I think it is necessary. However, I feel that if we retained more in K-2 we wouldn't have to struggle with this as much in the upper grades. In K-2 the social stigma isn't there as much. The kids don't really get it yet.
ReplyDeleteGreat post and very thought-provoking! Like many other issues, the answer varies and the factors should be balanced, in my opinion. The difficulty is that it's different for each student....if you ask, "what is best for the student?" considering social, academic, emotional, and physical development (among many other factors), it gets very complicated. Often, those answers are unknown because it is like trying to see into the future. I don't have any answer, just more questions.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really good discussion about retention and social promotion. Is it true that if a teacher recommends a student repeat a grade, that the parent can fight it and have their child promoted with only a notation that it is against teacher recommendation? I heard that ultimately a parent can deny a retention (at the elementary level at least) and I wondered how much truth was behind that statement.
ReplyDeleteI think at the younger grades, it is not as "socially hurtful" to the student to stay back as it can be middle school age and up. But at that point, the student should understand because their education is completely in their control. I agree that a student should be retained if they are not meeting appropriate grade level standards as long as all intervention avenues have been used to help this child throughout the entire school year. But overall, this will always be a gray area to me, not one with a black or white answer! Each student is unique and need to be treated that way.
I visited a school once that addressed the issue of students reading on different grade levels and retention in a novel way. (No pun intended!) The whole school had language arts during the same 90 minute block each morning. That way, students could go from their homeroom, with age peers, to the appropriate reading level room during the block. The school also allowed students to move fluidly between rooms as they gained reading levels. This also addressed the issue of students who read at a level higher than their age peers. I realize that this solution also has its drawbacks, as there would certainly be a stigma attached to needing to go to a reading class with other, younger students, and scheduling of subjects such as gym and art would be tricky. The principal and all of the teacher I spoke with really liked this arrangement, though, and the students were making great strides.
ReplyDeleteHmm...this is a hard one. I am a second grade teacher and at my school, we try to remediate those students who are not successfully learning the curriculum. Extra time and effort is put into helping all of our second grade students achieve success. Whether it be through tutoring after school or extra practice time during school. I have not retained a student yet (I have only taught second grade for two years).
ReplyDeleteI think that after all options for helping the student have been exhausted,retention is a good option. You don't want to send on a student that is not ready because they will be so overwhelmed in the next grade that they will probably shut down completely. So...with that being said retention could help students after every effort has been made to help them in that school year.
From the perspective of a high school teacher, I have seen too many students that are sent to high school that have been socially promoted for years and lack the basic skills that are necessary to succeed. This ultimately leads to tremendous frustrations at the high school and causes many of their discipline issues and can ultimately lead them to drop out entirely. It seems that the gap widens the further along some of these students move.
ReplyDeleteRetaining students in the younger grades seems to make the most sense to prevent the gaps from getting to the point where they cannot be closed. Unfortunately, I’m sure our elementary schools do not have an unlimited number of resources to retain all of these students until they are ready to move on. The real world economics prevents our schools from providing our youngest students from always getting the all of the help they need.
How about we get rid of grade levels entirely? Why not promote kids when they are ready and not just when the school year ends? I can only imagine the logistics that would be necessary to make this a reality, but allowing kids to learn at the pace they are capable of makes a lot of sense to me. Maybe this would be a use of the millions of dollars spend on these diagnostic tools that predict students’ scores on standardized tests. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself on that last comment.
There have been many great posts to this blog. Retention of failing students is an important and emotional issue for everyone who has a stake in education. But is social promotion a valid option? As a high school chemistry teacher, I daily see students woefully unprepared for a rigorous course like chemistry. I have a 20% failure rate in my class due in part to unprepared students. Even my local community college is feeling the effects of unprepared students. One quarter of the classes offered in any given semster are considered remedial. This question of retention or social promotion is one that will have to be dealt with by every school district.
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with the idea that retention would always be a last resort especially in the late elementary and middle school ages. At these levels, the social aspects of school are becoming more important and the stigma of being retained is great. If retention is to be used it must be used before the children are really aware of what it means to be retained.
What would be the substitute for retention? I must honestly admit I do not have a good idea. Obviously, the student who fails needs remdial work to bring them up to grade level. This will add to the workload of a student who has already shown they can not keep up, not to mention time and cost issues to the student, teachers and school districts. Some form of tracking could be implemented to catch the failing students, but that brings even more headaches with the lawsuits it would generate. Maybe we need to think outside of the box, get rid of grade levels and classrooms, and let students learn at their own rates, and move on to new levels when they are ready. Or even more radically, one room school houses up to 6th or 8th grade so students can get the help and support they need with a lower student to teacher ratios.
I think in all the discussion, we fail to address the fundemental reasons of why a student is retained. Poverty, parental engagement, school structure and funding. Until these basic issues are addressed, we will still have problems with retention and social promotion.
I think Alan's comment about getting rid of grade levels and classrooms etc. might be the answer. Rather than promote or demote, students just learn. Imagine that, just learning and not worrying about what grade you are in! I've heard of multi-grade classrooms where the teachers will have grades 2 and 3 in one class, so I suppose that's a viable option.
ReplyDeleteValerie
I was just talking about this to a parent the other day. Her nephew went to school in Baltimore City, and they wanted to hold him back in fifth grade. Unless there are intense interventions in place to help this child make up several grade levels, the retention is not going to matter, in my opinion. I have retained two students, and I can't honestly say that it made a huge difference, unfortunately. One was a third grader, the other, fourth. Maybe it made a small difference, but I know these students continued to struggle academically and socially. This was years ago, and perhaps we didn't do enough to intervene during the retention year. I disagree with a lot of NCLB, but I do think there is more in place to help struggling students. I always keep these students in the back of my mind and wonder if I did the right thing.
ReplyDeleteTo promote or not to promote……
ReplyDeleteInteresting that this question has been debated since the days when graded schools replaced the one room school house. Just like many of us have vacillated back and forth in this blog, so too have school policies gone from merit promotion to social promotion and back again.
Fast forward to the 21st century and educational initiatives like IDEA legislation that guarantees many struggling students an IEP complete with learning accommodations. Add to that the “Leave no Child Behind” legislation which requires standardized testing, and additional strategies like focus groups, interventions, and differentiated instruction and you would think the number of students who fail would be eliminated. All these initiatives are catching some of the students who slip through the cracks; however, teachers are not miracle workers. For those students who have not benefited from remediation and intervention in the early grades I agree with my fellow bloggers ….it’s time to consider retention.