Policy & Reform

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, The Tech Edvocate June 3, 2017

Pass or Fail: Retention Has Long-Term Effects on Students

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

It has been said that one single choice or event can alter the course of a person’s entire life. How would you feel if this decision was made for you based on completely misguided principles?

The long-term impact of retention has been studied extensively. Students overwhelming state that they consider retention to be a life-changing experience. Students often indicate that they experience a dramatic increase in stress and an even more pronounced dislike of school. Supporting an overwhelming amount of research, this signifies that the education system sometimes uses student retention as an intervention strategy for identification of a learning disability.

An assessment was made to identify low self-esteem signals for students in a research study conducted by Jessica Fanguy and Richard D. Mathis. Five of eight student participants and five of the eight parents commented that low self-esteem was an issue following the retention. One student’s father specifically indicated that they felt their child had low self-esteem and another parent indicated that their child clearly “felt bad about herself,” largely as a result of their retention experience. Two parents also reported that their children were giving up too easily and not believing in themselves, especially at school, in academic areas. One of the parents described how their child had called herself “stupid,” and one of the students indicated that they were aware that they did not set goals too high because they felt they could not achieve them. The student did not believe there was any point in setting challenging goals.

The researchers came to the conclusion that the students might well have had fewer self-esteem issues (and a greater inclination to set challenging goals) if they had not experienced retention and if it had not proved such a negative experience. Other students stated that the teachers had mistreated them, adding to the feelings of failure, but also making the students angry. They expressed their frustration at having to repeat a year. One student described dropping out of school to escape the resentment and sense of failure, as well as the victimization by teachers. According to Fanguy and Mathis, only two of the students interviewed demonstrated any signs of positive self-concepts; describing themselves in a positive light and feeling optimistic about their abilities.

Indicative of other studies that have assessed retention among students, Fanguy and Mathis clearly demonstrated that retention is destructive to a student’s development on many fronts. Although not all retained students are likely to experience such debilitating self-esteem issues, anger at retention, or oppression as the students in the study, the findings suggest that a range of problems apply, and often leave students with a sense of failure.

Socially promoted students experienced similar problems, including poor self-esteem, poor sense of self-worth, issues with peers, anger, and resentment toward teachers and school administrators, and general apathy toward school. In fact, some studies suggest that peer isolation or bullying is sometimes even more extreme for socially promoted students than for those who are retained. Without reasonable self-esteem, adolescents can prove unable to resolve the crisis of the identity during development. Thus, any experience debilitating to self-esteem is likely to leave students at a serious disadvantage.

In a relevant study, it was concluded that academic ability was one of the many factors used by adolescents to evaluate themselves. Failure at school can certainly compromise self-esteem and many students identify failure to pass a grade, the experience of retention, or even social promotion, as distinct evidence of academic failure.

Issues in the home can also factor into retention and social promotion problems, too, and several of the students featured in the study by Fanguy and Mathis cited lack of parental support as problematic. Two students even went so far as to say that they might have done better in school and potentially avoided retention completely, had they received more help from parents. The perceptions belong to students; whose own identity and conception of schoolwork undoubtedly play some role in the outcome of their academic efforts. There was, at least, a perceived need for students to have better, more extensive supports. The students believed their failing grades were at least partly due to inadequate support in school or at home. The discrepancy of perceived versus actual need is worth further investigation, particularly with regard to students’ lack of accomplishment.

Fanguy and Mathis also conclude that many of the students in the study lacked the skills to advocate for themselves. This potentially identifies another non-academic cost of retention, that affected students may already be reluctant to ask for help from school representatives or family when they need it.

If the decision to retain a student has been made, how much do you personally feel this choice will impact them both in the short and long term?

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Trending Topics June 2, 2017

Tax credits, school choice and ‘neovouchers’: What you need to know

Kevin Welner, University of Colorado

As Republican lawmakers craft a tax reform bill, there’s speculation on the import taxes, value-added taxes and tax cuts it may usher in. Meanwhile, it’s likely that the bill will also include a major education policy initiative from the Trump administration: a tax credit designed to fund private school vouchers.

A decade ago I started researching this new kind of voucher – funded through a somewhat convoluted tax credit mechanism – that appears to have particular appeal to President Trump and other Republicans.

These new vouchers (or “neovouchers”) are similar to conventional vouchers in many ways, but there are some important differences. It’s those differences that neovoucher advocates most care about and that everyone should understand.

President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos tour Saint Andrew Catholic School in Orlando, Florida.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Conventional vouchers

What exactly is a school voucher? Typically, a voucher is direct financial support that helps families pay for the cost of private K-12 schooling. Proponents see vouchers as a way to help children attend nonpublic schools. Detractors see vouchers as undermining funding and support needed by public education.

All vouchers subsidize tuition with tax dollars. This can be accomplished in many ways, and the nuances matter.

Conventional voucher policies use the relatively straightforward method of allocating state money to give vouchers directly to eligible parents. The parents, in turn, give the vouchers to a private school of their choice. These schools are sometimes secular, but are usually religious.

The private schools then redeem these vouchers to obtain money from the state. In the 16 states where conventional voucher policies exist, they produce about 175,000 vouchers annually. This amounts to 3.3 percent of the nation’s private school population.

Yet, these direct vouchering programs present four major problems for school choice advocates.

First, they’re typically available only to lower-income families; wealthier families are usually not eligible.

Second, when governments directly provide voucher money, participating schools are generally required to comply with a variety of guidelines, such as accreditation requirements, anti-discrimination regulation, minimum teacher qualifications, financial reporting and/or the administration of a standardized test to students receiving the voucher.

Third, vouchers are simply not politically popular – which is why the more palatable term “opportunity scholarships” (courtesy of messaging guru Frank Luntz) has become increasingly popular.

Finally – and importantly – state constitutions often prohibit the channeling of state money to religious institutions. In many states, this means that conventional voucher programs cannot exist if the program includes religious schools. Although the Supreme Court has ruled that vouchers don’t violate federal law, state constitutions can create legal obstacles that are more formidable than those under the U.S. Constitution.

St. Joseph Academy, a Catholic school in Cleveland, is one of the top three schools to benefit from Ohio voucher dollars. Ohio’s conventional vouchers can be applied to secular and nonsecular schools alike, but 97 percent go to religious schools.
Oarbogast / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Vouchers on steroids

To sidestep these issues, many state lawmakers have embraced a new kind of voucher policy that gets essentially the same result but changes the state’s role from paying for vouchers to issuing tax credits.

This approach was first adopted in Arizona, in 1997, where the legislature passed a law setting up a system in which any taxpayer could “donate” money to a special, private nonprofit corporation. That corporation then issues vouchers to parents, who use them to pay for private school tuition. The taxpayers then get the money back from the state in the form of a tax credit.

Arizona’s constitution – typical of language in state constitutions – requires that “No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction, or to the support of any religious establishment.” But Arizona’s elaborate mechanism keeps the specific dollars out of state coffers. Consequently, state funding only indirectly supports religious institutions. The Arizona Supreme Court found this distinction sufficient, ruling that the tax credits did not violate the state’s constitutional prohibition against spending public money for religious support.

Beyond this legal advantage, advocates favor this sort of tax-credit-voucher method because it appears less likely to be regulated. It’s also likely to be open to a wider range of parents – not just lower-income or special needs families. And the complexity of the neovoucher approach obscures the fact that it’s really a voucher program, making it less of a political lightning rod.

Some wealthy taxpayers can even receive tax benefits exceeding the value of their donations. This baffling outcome is because of a loophole tied to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), an extra tax imposed on some wealthier taxpayers to ensure that they pay their fair share. The AMT limits certain tax breaks, such as the ability to deduct state tax payments from federal taxes. However – and here’s the twist – these AMT taxpayers can deduct charitable contributions. And so, these wealthier taxpayers can shift their state tax payment into a “charitable” contribution and instantly transform the payment into a federal deduction. In the six states that give a full tax credit for voucher donations, those taxpayers can get back the full value of their voucher plus a deduction for the donation.

A decade ago when I wrote a book explaining these tax credit policies and labeling them “neovouchers,” they existed in only six states and generated about 100,000 vouchers. Today, 17 states have tax-credit policies similar to Arizona’s on their books, generating a quarter-million vouchers and growing every year.

Students at The King’s Academy in West Palm Beach, Florida. Florida is one of the states that issues tax-credit-style vouchers.
Randal Martin / Wikipedia, CC BY

These new vouchers aren’t likely to help kids

Do these vouchers improve student achievement? The research suggests that we shouldn’t expect children’s learning to be affected.

An evaluation of Florida’s neovoucher law – which the Trump administration appears to be using as its model – found that students receiving these neovouchers had a nonsignificant (-0.7 percentile points) loss in math and nonsignificant (+0.1 percentile points) gain in reading on standardized test scores.

Similarly, research focused on conventional vouchers has tended to reach this same conclusion, finding no significant change in student test scores. More recent studies, looking at conventional vouchers in Louisiana, Ohio and Indiana actually find that test scores have declined – in some cases, by surprisingly large margins.

What to expect

While, thus far, neovoucher policies have existed only on the state level, proposals are now appearing at a federal level.

In February of 2017, Rep. Todd Rokita of Indiana and three Republican colleagues introduced a bill (H.B. 895) that sets forth the basic structure for a federal neovoucher policy.

But the particulars of the neovoucher policy that ultimately emerges in the Republicans’ tax reform bill are up for grabs. Based on the wide variety of existing state neovoucher policies, it is possible that the federal proposal will provide a full 100 percent credit (as does H.B. 895) or a credit of only 50 or 65 percent. It might limit eligibility to children in families at the poverty level, or it might have expanded or even universal eligibility.

It also remains to be seen whether federal neovouchers would be allocated only in states with existing programs or might be distributed in all states, including those with no such laws.

Interestingly, some of the staunchest advocates of state-level neovouchers have expressed concern and even opposition to a federal initiative. Beyond general conservative resistance to federal overreach in education policy, they voice familiar concerns about the likelihood of regulations following money, particularly from future Democratic leadership in Washington, D.C.

And, of course, a federal neovoucher program would face significant fiscal obstacles as well. Absent large cuts elsewhere, these policies would strain the federal budget, requiring some creative work on the part of lawmakers – particularly since the tax reform bill will have to be revenue neutral. The cost of vouchers for even a fraction of the nation’s 57 million K-12 students could easily cost tens of billions.

This daunting price tag, however, probably won’t deter President Trump or Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who have stated their opposition to the “public” part of public schools, with Trump even denigrating them as socialistic “government schools” that are part of the “American carnage” that “leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.”

It seems unlikely that they will forego their chance to give tax dollars to private education.

Kevin Welner, Professor, Education Policy & Law; Director, National Education Policy Center, University of Colorado

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Trending Topics June 2, 2017

Is charter school fraud the next Enron?

Preston Green III, University of Connecticut

In 2001, Texas-based energy giant Enron shocked the world by declaring bankruptcy. Thousands of employees lost their jobs, and investors lost billions.

As a scholar who studies the legal and policy issues pertaining to school choice, I’ve observed that the same type of fraud that occurred at Enron has been cropping up in the charter school sector. A handful of school officials have been caught using the Enron playbook to divert funding slated for these schools into their own pockets.

As school choice champions like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos push to make charter schools a larger part of the educational landscape, it’s important to understand the Enron scandal and how charter schools are vulnerable to similar schemes.

What is a related-party transaction?

Enron’s downfall was caused largely by something called “related-party transactions.” Understanding this concept is crucial for grasping how charter schools may also be in danger.

Related-party transactions are business arrangements between companies with close associations: It could be between two companies owned or managed by the same group or it could be between one large company and a smaller company that it owns. Although related-party transactions are legal, they can create severe conflicts of interest, allowing those in power to profit from employees, investors and even taxpayers.

This is what happened at Enron. Because Enron wanted to look good to investors, the company created thousands of “special purpose entities” to hide its debt. Because of these off-the-books partnerships, Enron was able to artificially boost its profits, thus tricking investors.

Enron’s Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow managed several of these special purpose entities, benefiting from his position of power at the expense of the company’s shareholders. For instance, these companies paid him US$30 million in management fees – far more than his Enron salary.

Fastow also conspired with other Enron employees to pocket another $30 million from one of these entities, and he moved $4.5 million from this scheme into his family foundation.

Enron’s collapse revealed the weaknesses of the gatekeepers – including boards of directors and the Securities and Exchange Commission – that are responsible for protecting the markets. Because of lax accountability and federal deregulation, these watchdogs failed to detect the dangers posed by Fastow’s conflict of interest until it was too late. Congress responded by passing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which tightened the requirements for oversight.

Enron employees lost their jobs and billions of dollars in pension benefits.
AP Photo/Pat Sullivan

How do related-party transactions occur in charter schools?

Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have legislation that allows for charter schools. Just like public schools, charter schools receive public funding. However, unlike public schools, charter schools are exempt from many laws governing financial transparency.

Without strict regulation, some bad actors have been able to take advantage of charter schools as an opportunity for private investment. In the worst cases, individuals have been able to use related-party transactions to fraudulently funnel public money intended for charter schools into other business ventures that they control.

Such was the case with Ivy Academia, a Los Angeles-area charter school. The co-founders, Yevgeny Selivanov and Tatayana Berkovich, also owned a private preschool that shared facilities with the charter school. The preschool entered into a sublease for the facilities at a monthly rent of $18,390 – the fair-market value. The preschool then assigned the sublease to the charter school at a monthly rent of $43,870.

The Los Angeles district attorney’s office charged the husband-and-wife team with multiple counts of fraud. Selivanov was sentenced to nearly five years in jail in 2013.

Fraudulent related-party transactions can also occur between education management organizations (EMOs) and their affiliates. EMOs are for-profit or nonprofit entities that sometimes manage charter schools, and might also own smaller companies that could provide services to those schools.

For example, Imagine Schools is a nonprofit EMO that runs 63 charter schools enrolling 33,000 students across the country. It also owns SchoolHouse Finance, a for-profit company that, among other things, handles real estate for many of Imagine’s charter schools. Though charter schools typically spend around 14 percent of their funding on rent, some of the Imagine Schools were paying SchoolHouse Finance up to 40 percent of their funding for rent.

One of the charter schools operated by Imagine Schools, Renaissance Academy in Kansas City, sued the company for charging it excessive rent. In 2015, a federal judge agreed, ordering Imagine Schools to pay almost $1 million in damages to Renaissance. The court’s ruling suggested that Imagine Schools was essentially taking advantage of the charter school: The EMO profited from the excessive rent and failed to tell the school’s board of directors how the cost might disrupt the school’s ability to pay for textbooks and teacher salaries.

Students at Renaissance Academy charter school work on a paper recycling project. Renaissance Academy shut down in 2012 and was later ordered to receive $1 million in damages from its EMO, Imagine Schools.
AP Photo/Orlin Wagner

The problem could get worse

Because of insufficient oversight, Fastow’s fraudulent use of related-party transactions at Enron was not stopped until it was too late. Similarly, the Ivy Academia and Renaissance Academy examples reveal insufficient checks and balances in the charter school sector. In both cases, the monitors responsible for protecting charter schools found nothing wrong with the rental agreements.

It might be tempting to conclude that Ivy Academia and Renaissance Academy stories are anecdotal – that fear of widespread abuse of related-party transactions is overblown. However, there have been dozens of allegations of similar transgressions, including against industry giants such as K12 Inc. and Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School. Though only a handful of these allegations have resulted in the removal of the charter school operators, related-party fraud in the charter school sector is an emerging issue.

In September 2016, the Education Department’s inspector general released the findings of an audit of several dozen charter schools detailing significant problems with related-party transactions.

The report also made several recommendations for additional oversight. Such protection could come at the state level (e.g., providing guidance to states regarding charter school contractual agreements with EMOs) or at the federal level (e.g., improving the Department’s own monitoring of charter school-EMO relationships).

However, Trump has generally expressed a dislike of federal regulations, and DeVos, who played a major role in the development of Michigan’s charter school law, has successfully fought attempts to increase oversight of Michigan’s charter school sector. With such anti-regulatory stances, it seems unlikely that Trump or DeVos will support the kind of oversight that’s needed to protect charter schools.

This aversion to regulation at the federal level could cost taxpayers millions of dollars and could result in the closing or disruption of schools – potentially damaging the education of students they serve. Since charter schools are growing fastest in low-income and minority communities, these children stand to be hurt the most.

Preston Green III, John and Carla Klein Professor of Urban Education, Professor of Educational Leadership and Law, University of Connecticut

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics May 31, 2017

Pass or Fail: The Psychological Effects of Social Promotion and Retention

How impressionable were you growing up? Do you think what your teachers and peers thought of you mattered? As an adult, you likely don’t feel the weight of other peoples’ opinions the way you did as a child. Children have yet to establish their own identity, though, so outside factors easily influence their sense of self.

Often, studies concentrate on the obvious issues regarding grade retention, yet researchers Jessica Fanguy and Richard D. Mathis consider these effects to only be the tip of the psychosocial iceberg. Although grade retention has significantly reduced student numbers in schools, consideration of the cause of this is perhaps more relevant and indicative of the true underlying cost. Furthermore, the psychosocial delays that lead to the dropping out of retained students are more likely to be long-lasting, and often time permanent.

Erik Erikson stages of identity development and his research, which has ready application to retention and social promotion policies, sheds considerable light on these issues. Erikson specifically noted that having a high level of self-esteem was critical to identity development for adolescents. When young adults feel good about themselves, they develop a positive identity. Those who do not possess a pleasant self-image, tend to struggle with their identity and can acquire maladaptive or dysfunctional behaviors.

As Fanguy and Mathis point out, Erikson’s theory regarding identity development focuses on individual psychological growth, including how it pertains to adolescent life, and isolates social components of development that include family, school, and peers. In their study, Fanguy and Mathis specifically apply this theory to demonstrate the damaging psychosocial fallout for grade-retained students.

In student and parent interviews, Fanguy and Mathis noted that the most common cause for retention was environmental stress, apathy towards school, insufficient preparation for the following grade level and poor behavior patterns. These were the causes the interview subjects, both students and parents, identified as ultimately leading to retention. Whether these were the actual root, and whether or not they might have been something more abstract (such as the quality of teaching or the nature of the testing), could not be easily gauged from the student or parent perspective.

Fanguy and Mathis performed an in-depth study using eight students who had been retained in eighth grade, five white and three black students of five boys and three girls. All except one were middle class, with the remaining student in a lower income bracket. In a series of interviews with the students and their parents, Fanguy and Mathis discovered several factors that led to their retention.

Three of the students cited environmental factors. These encompassed being sick for a portion of the year, one’s mother had been sick, and one lived in a “bad” neighborhood with ongoing struggles due to drug transactions and the accompanying violence. Other issues included poor behavior patterns and lack of preparedness. Three of the students noted that severe apathy set in after they were retained. For two of these students, their apathy was directly related to the inability to perform their schoolwork.

Hopelessness in the face of difficult assignments led them to give up, both inside and outside of the classroom. Several children expressed extreme distress once they discovered they had been retained, with others noting they became angry and withdrawn. Two female students, reported a heartbreaking sense of loss after their friends had moved on and that friendships were completely severed.

An enormous issue experienced by five of the eight students was relentless bullying by peers. Names such as “stupid” and “dumb,” were used to tease the retained students. Two male study participants got into fights with other students as a result of the harassment. Interestingly, most of the parents were unaware their children were being bullied. The prominence of psychosocial issues tracing back to retention were profound. The overwhelmingly negative reaction from retained students suggests there’s both strong and detrimental impact on their self-esteem.

Think back on your childhood. How would you have responded if you were retained in school? What lasting impact would retention have had on your relationships, motivation level and identity development as a child?

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics May 28, 2017

Pass or Fail: The Real Cost to the Individual

What do you see as the main positives of retention and social promotion in American schools? How about the drawbacks? Are these practices actually helping students or do they only work in theory?

Edmond Shoat, a nineteen-year-old Chicago dropout who had been held back a year, left high school just two weeks before graduation. By any estimate, he has had a hard life. He grew up in the Cabrini-Green project, notorious for its gang violence. His uncle, who wasn’t much older than he, was murdered near their apartment – Edmond heard the shots, and rushed out to find his uncle dead.

Following that experience, the family tried to get themselves into a better situation. “I’d say about a month later, my whole family moved out of the projects,” says Edmond. “My mom, she worked at a nursing home. And you know, sometimes she’d either quit the job, or we’d have to move. We couldn’t pay the rent. Or we’d find another job and move somewhere else. We did a lot of moving around.”

Edmond wound up at Senn High School, one of the worst-performing schools in an area known for particularly terrible schools. He didn’t do badly, however, and got on the football team. But one day he got into a fight, which escalated and eventually landed him in jail for a week, on a charge of illegally possessing a weapon (a pocketknife he’d forgotten about, which wasn’t used in the fight). Around the same time, he became a father: his three-year-old son, Rajan, now lives with the child’s mother in Atlanta.

A chemistry teacher at Senn, Antonio San Agustin, tried to help Edmond stay on track with his studies while the teen was in jail and working his way through the court system. “He was a good kid,” Agustin remembers. “And he came to class, always looking to make up his assignments because he was absent quite a bit. I didn’t have problems with him making up the assignments.”

But even the intervention of concerned teachers couldn’t keep Edmond in school. He flunked his first attempt at the GED and now has a low-paying job. He dreams of being able to move to live closer to his son, and of eventually becoming an actor. Yet, the statistics are not on his side.

Do the pros of social promotion and retention outweigh the cons? Assessing the costs of retention on an individual is difficult, but attempts have been made. A study by Thompson and Cunningham concluded that retention basically discourages students whose motivation and confidence are already shaky. Findings indicate that promoted students gain an opportunity to advance through next year’s curriculum, while retained students go over the same ground and thus fall further behind their advancing peers.

Several other studies identify a high correlation between student retention and student dropout rates. Goldschmidt and Wang, for instance, applied the National Longitudinal Study (NELS) to examine student and school factors associated with students dropping out in different grades. Their findings showed that consistent with previous research, being held back is the single strongest predictor of dropping out and that its effect is consistent for both early and late dropouts. Retention can destroy self-esteem and otherwise undermine social and personal adjustments. With retention typically occurring during the most formative and impressionable years, the impact can be overwhelming.

Retained students have increased risks in health-related areas such as stress, low social confidence, substance abuse, and violent behaviors. Several studies have demonstrated that students view retention as being more degrading and stressful than losing a parent or going blind, which is clearly indicative of a tremendous cost personally and socially. Highly negative development changes, including below average self-esteem, higher instances of social isolation from peers, shame regarding grade retention and being older than classmates, resentment of teachers and administrators and an overall diminished quality of life. Without feeling confident in their education setting and lacking meaningful, positive relationships with peers, teachers, and administrators, a student’s academic potential is undermined.

Could retention have played a primary role in Edmond dropping out of school? What could have gone differently to help him succeed? Would Edmond be living out his dreams as an involved father and working actor if retention hadn’t been in play?

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics May 25, 2017

Pass or Fail: The Real Cost of Student Retention

Retention affects more than just students. What do you think is the cost of retention to schools, educators, communities and society as a whole?

Research on the impact of retention dates back to the initiation of the practice – the point when educators and policymakers believed it to be an effective means for managing student non-achievement. A recent evaluation of retention research, however, suggests that the lack of accounting for differences in social, emotional, and academic characteristics between promoted students and their retained peer, allows for any number of “vulnerabilities.”

Numerous and hard to track, these vulnerabilities may be the cause of negative post-retention outcomes, rather than retention itself. Using higher levels of quality controls for pre-retention characteristics of promoted and retained students also tends to indicate less negative effects. Even so, enough evidence exists to make student retention a questionable practice.

Cost of Retention to Students

In the wealth of research about the costs of retention, it is the cost of retention to students that researchers most often discuss. Not surprisingly, retention often leads students to have negative feelings about school, as well as a sense of low self-esteem when it comes to the ability to perform well academically. Some children find the fact that they have been retained embarrassing and may feel ashamed about being separated from their age-grade peers.

Retained students may become unmotivated and disengaged in school. They may also develop behavior problems (particularly at school) and become involved in bullying, either as a perpetrator or as a victim. Children often feel stigmatized by retention, and there is an increased possibility that retained students will end up dropping out, their long-term trajectory totally undermined.

Research shows that a retained child does not generally “catch up” academically to his or her grade-level peers. While there is some indication that achievement among children retained in elementary school does improve, for older children there appear to be no significant benefits.

Cost of Retention to Schools

In addition to the negative influences of retention on children, school systems struggle a great deal when their retention rates are high. They may end up with large numbers of children in retention checkpoint grades and thus also experience difficulty to manage them. When schools find themselves retaining the same children repeatedly, they may also end up with substantial numbers of over-aged students in certain grades. This is another obvious problem, of course, regarding retention consequences, but one that has long escaped true attention from educators at the policy level.

With specific grades established as retention points, it’s not uncommon for students to essentially create something of a backlog. In practical terms, this creates an imbalance in maturity and a potentially irregular experience for teachers and students in the grade level as a whole. At the very least, students who are beyond the typical age for elementary or middle school present a very particular challenge for school districts regarding placement and services. Should established policies place these students with typical-aged elementary and middle school students? Should separate policies apply to students who have reached a certain age within either elementary or middle school systems – who have aged out, as it were?

Retention strains school district and state financial resources, particularly when a large number of students are retained. The additional costs of educating grade-repeating students are evident when you multiply the average annual cost per pupil by the number of students retained in any given year. Texas, for example, spent more than $2 billion to educate the 202,099 students retained during the 2006–07 school year. With budget cuts prevalent across the nation, the problems of continuing these sorts of difficulties indefinitely are readily apparent.

Cost of Retention to Society

The social cost of retention is directly influenced by the increased number of dropouts. Students who leave school prior to receiving a diploma tend to have lower earnings over their lifetime, which means they will pay fewer taxes, and may even be more dependent on social services. A significantly high number of incarnated individuals are dropouts, as are those who tend to commit certain crimes. The cost of retention for society clearly has an impact.

When examining the impact and cost of student retention, do you feel it is even worth considering as a sound education policy?

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics May 22, 2017

Pass or Fail: Who are the Students at Risk for Retention?

As an educator, how should potentially “at risk” students be identified? Is there a sector of the student population that should receive more attention based solely on their disadvantages or lack of support?

Fundamentally, both social promotion and retention work on the principle that typical children should master certain material according to an age-grade classroom structure. In other words, both policies assume there is such a thing as a typical child, and that most children are typical.

They also assume there is a ready way to gauge how typical children develop. While this last contention is fairly reasonable and is foundational to a whole range of developmental research, the merits of the other two are debatable. Are they reasonable enough to be a foundation for education? For an entire institution of public education?

We can at least agree that the emphasis on what is “typical” is an obvious limitation of both policies. Is it logical to base an education policy on this notion? At best, there is an applicable range for developmental trends and abilities. Those trends and ranges serve to help parents, educators, and even health practitioners garner a basic idea of how a child should be developing. But there is always a scale, and there’s seldom the expectation that every child will meet the same developmental criteria at the same time. That is, in any area except education.

Retention often takes place in earlier grades, with most retention occurring in grades K–3. The vast majority of these retentions take place in kindergarten or first grade, which is consistent with the focus of state-level retention policies. Children with certain background characteristics are at a higher risk for retention, inevitably creating a public policy issue for the public education system.

Perhaps most strikingly, we see that children from low socioeconomic backgrounds and children of color are more likely to be at risk for retention. Research shows that boys are more likely to find themselves retained than girls. Children with attention issues, behavior issues, or delayed development are also more at risk for retention, as are students whose families tend to be more mobile. Children from single parent homes, or homes where parents have low educational attainment, are also at higher risk for retention.

Children who are young for their grade level and children are who are small for their age seem to have a higher risk of retention, although the evidence for this is inconsistent. The increasing population of English Language Learners constitutes yet another group of children at risk for failure. For children with multiple at-risk characteristics, the incidence of retention increases.

Because of the varying strategies for addressing learning issues by state, students are also at a relatively higher risk for retention in certain states. Those states employing more regular and rigorous assessments by age tend to create a greater risk for retention for students. These assessments are interventions in their ways, though, further clouding the actual benefits or disadvantages inherent to retention.

Given that retention is so often based on testing, there are inevitable risks based on whether students are good exam takers. Some exceptional students just do not perform well under exam conditions. In addition to this, we see some disparity in terms of subject testing, since there are different assessment types and methodologies depending on the knowledge area or skills under examination. Subjectivity comes into play to some degree, with written assessments and even non-test-based assessments, for which retention policies rarely make allowance.

In the states that administer high school exit exams, there are pass rates between 70-90 percent. For states that report disaggregated data, a substantial gap exists between pass rates for white students and students of color. For example, there are gaps ranging from 13-36 percentage points between white and African American students on mathematics tests, and 8-19 percentage points on tests of English Language Arts.

The differences between white and Hispanic students range between 2-23 percentage points, and 9-19 percentage points, respectively, for mathematics and English Language Arts. High school exit exams leave no time for improvement, however. Poor performance on state high school exit exams often leave students discouraged, and many end up dropping out of school rather than opting to retake the exam. The obvious problem being that students may be permanently set back as a result of a single test or because of a single area of struggle.

How do you feel educators can impact at risk students best? Should different instructional methods be utilized for various at risk student groups? Further, how does one determine which instruction techniques will be best suited for the particular group of students needing intervention?

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics May 19, 2017

Pass or Fail: Effective Retention Polices – The Chicago Case

The goal of retention policies is to ensure that students who move to the next level of learning have mastered the required knowledge and skills. The accompanying exemptions and alternative paths surely beg the question: do retention and the various related supported elements thwart social promotion?

The problem is simple: some children may progress from grade to grade without reaching state required benchmarks. Most states and school districts worry about the number of students who are retained without alternative avenues for promotion being made available. The consensus, spoken or not, is that retention does very little to solve the underlying problem of retention and social promotion.

The retention policy path in Chicago, for instance, provides an overt example of the challenges associated with the implementation of retention policies, and how social promotion can creep into well-intended policies meant to discontinue the practice.

The Chicago Public School System (CPS) developed a retention policy where none existed at the state level. CPS believed that a retention policy would result in students working harder, receiving more attention from parents with respect to their schooling, and experiencing more focus from teachers when at risk for retention.

Initiated in 1996, the CPS policy required students in the third, sixth, and eighth grades to reach specified scores on standardized tests for reading and mathematics, or face retention. The policy also included a summer school attendance requirement for students – the top method for avoiding retention and a transition program designed to improve reading skills of eighth-grade students. The goal was to ensure that upon entering high school, students would be able to read high school level textbooks. By 2011, the retention rate had shrunk from 15 percent (at the time the policy was initiated) to 4 percent.

However, reduced retention rates have reportedly not been the result of improved achievement among students. Both implementation and structural components of the policy have weakened over the years, which in effect compromised the policy’s original intent. CPS did not have effective means to enforce consequences for children who were not meeting policy promotion requirements. Students who were obligated to pass summer school to avoid retention were allowed to enter the next highest grade, without attending summer classes. High school freshmen were required to pass all freshmen level classes, however, and to achieve certain scores on standardized tests, or attend summer school to escape retention. Following later adjustments, all students who did not meet the freshman promotion requirements after their summer school attendance went into a class for failing students when they returned to school in the fall.

Given that summer school was an instrumental component of the CPS’s policy, there was concern that if too many students were scheduled for retention, the number of summer school slots would be insufficient to handle the volume of students required to attend. The number of students performing below grade level was already substantial at the inception of the policy. Setting unattainable expectations for performance on standardized tests would simply result in an imbalance in the number of students required to attend summer school and slots available to accommodate them. Ultimately, the CPS made it easier for students to avoid retention despite poor academic performance. Achievement test scores needed for promotion were lowered so that more students were eligible to move ahead.

In the end, summer school and other interventions outlined in the CPS retention policy proved insufficient to support the number of children affected – which was somewhat inevitable, based on early number projections. Further disaster followed, with budget cuts that reduced the impact of the policy even further. As a result of the CPS budget cuts, summer schools were in session for fewer days. Summer school class sizes also increased, undermining the potential for teachers to give proper attention to students. Budget cuts also meant a redistribution of funds initially slated to add additional teachers to schools with high numbers of retained students. Various tutoring programs were either cut or discontinued through the process. As is the case with many retention policies today, educators went ahead and promoted students if the alternative was retention for more than one year.

Social promotion was not the primary problem facing CPS, though. Replacing social promotion with retention did not address the paramount and critical objective of the system: to increase learning among more students.

The CPS retention program is a good example of noble intentions gone awry. What can we learn and apply from the CPS initiative moving forward?

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Trending Topics May 18, 2017

4 Things That Educators Should Know About Education Reform

The United States educational system has undergone several reforms in response to the ever-changing needs of society. As high school graduates are expected to become a part of the national workforce, the output of schools needs to be in line with the expectations conferred on the national workforce as a whole. In this article, you will be guided through the major reforms that have taken place in the United States.

Reform refers to rectifying something that is unfit for its purpose. It is an ongoing process. Your educational experience was likely influenced by reform, and no doubt you too will be required to make certain adjustments or changes in your style of teaching on the basis of new reforms. Reform initiatives are also powerful sociopolitical agendas, which may determine the education you receive to become a teacher, the structure of the school in which you will teach, or the perception of what constitutes “effective teaching” as you begin your work as a new teacher.

To understand actions to change today’s education environment, you must have an understanding of reforms of the past. This will not only help you to become a better teacher; it will also allow you to use this knowledge when you become involved in the making and shaping of educational policy. Developments in technology, growing concerns around sustainability and increasing globalization, and the diverse multicultural society that has developed all put pressure on the educational system to change and undergo reforms. You never know what challenges the future will hold in this regard, or when you will be called upon to comment on or participate in reform initiatives.

Of fundamental importance to any discussion of educational reform is the role played by major stakeholders in the U.S. educational enterprise. As result, throughout this article we address the roles played by school districts, the states, and the federal government, and the impact of each on education reform. We also look at your calling to be a teacher, and the role you will play in enacting and participating in educational reform.

What education reforms in the United States have influenced how education is viewed and practiced today? The Commission of the Reorganization of Secondary Education’s 1918 report recommended that high schools offer a more diverse array of material than purely academic subjects. Subsequent reforms bolstered the provision of electives, and introduced guidance counselors and vocational training. The 1983 A Nation at Risk report suggested that the United States was failing to provide an adequate education. This report led to reforms in standardizing academic content and to a focus on standardized testing. In the 1980s and 1990s, teachers reacted against the confines of the standardized testing model. Growing awareness of poverty led to “full-service” schools, which provided health care, parent instruction, and more. In the 2000s, more diverse opportunities were on offer, including a rise in homeschooling, charter schools, and virtual schools. With the school voucher system, magnet schools, and open enrollment, strictures on attending public schools loosened somewhat.

What role (current and historical) has the school district, state, and federal government played in educational reform in the United States? District involvement in educational reform has traditionally been heavy, but recently districts are becoming more decentralized, giving more power to school boards and principals. States were initially interested in results-based reforms, focusing on grades and test scores. In the late 1980s, states moved toward more deregulation, which lasted about a decade. In the 1990s, states restructured schools in ways that fostered student development and empowered teachers. The No Child Left Behind Act in the early 2000s returned to a focus on standards-based education, though it has been heavily criticized and is viewed as being in need of reform. In the early 2010s, the federal government created the Common Core Standards, which provide teachers with insights into the skills and knowledge students require to excel.

At the end of December 2015, President Obama signed the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) into law, effectively sweeping away NCLB (Nelson 2015). The new bill made major changes to federal education policy. One thing that changed with the ESSA was how teacher performance is evaluated. States now have the ability to individually appraise how well its teachers are doing performance wise. Another alteration under the new law will allow states “to come up with their own way to determine the quality of their local schools.” This means that test scores are no longer the sole deciding factor for school performance.

ESSA lists music as a component of a well-rounded education and gives it more support than previous policies when it comes to access and funding. The law also means federal grant funding is opened for states and local school districts to support music education programs and further train music teachers. ESSA has been a long time coming. Considering that NCLB had needed an update since 2007, it is shocking how long it took to sign this new law.

What are the most significant trends and developments in educational reform in the United States today? Alternative teacher education programs are growing, though there have been criticisms that they focus on quantity rather than quality. The Teacher Education Accreditation Council (TEAC) and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) are in the process of merging into a single body called the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). NCLB has expanded parental rights by giving them more public school options. More collaboration between educational bodies at the state and district levels are helping to improve policy coordination. The idea of year-round schools is gaining ground among some reformers. Value-added assessment, which focuses on individual improvement rather than comparative scores, is another idea on the rise.

What factors promote successful reform? The creation of a “road map” is key to sustaining reform. Schools need commitment; ongoing improvement and development; adequate time to accomplish reform; effective, sustained leadership; and adequate funding. Accurate and effective evaluation of the reforms is also crucial.

Did we miss anything?

Click here to read all of the articles from this series.

Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Retention & Social Promotion Series, Trending Topics May 16, 2017

Pass or Fail: Did you Know that State Policies Impact Retention Rates?

The state you live in determines retention policy and procedures. Do you think state level mandates are a fair and appropriate way of addressing the challenges we face in education? Does it make sense that a student in one state may be promoted to the next grade, yet retained in another state based on differing policies?

The first point of consideration for state retention policies is the Taking Responsibility Report that suggested that children lacking reading skills should not be promoted beyond the fourth grade. The report precipitated the move by some states to establish “no social promotion” policies in the form of retention laws. In most instances, however, and at a state level, this policy established third-grade reading skills as a benchmark for promotion beyond third grade. The first of these policies emerged quickly.

The second point of consideration is the so-called benchmark for educational progression. Indeed, a basic state-level policy review shows that most states require the retention of children who do not meet stated promotion requirements. Colorado’s statute, for instance, recommends retention when students do not meet learning standards. West Virginia’s statute also allows for but does not require, retention.

So-called model retention laws, such as those passed in Florida, still allow for “good cause” retention exemptions. Schools can promote children if they pass an alternative state-approved reading assessment or demonstrate they have met the state required level of mastery based on their student portfolios. Limited English speakers – those students with less than two years of English instruction – are also exempt. So too are special needs students whose Individualized Education Plans, or IEPs, state that standardized testing is inappropriate.

Florida students with IEPs or 504 plans who were retained in kindergarten or first or second grade, and who continue to have deficiencies after two or more years of reading remediation; and students who continue to have deficiencies after two or more years of reading remediation or who were retained in kindergarten or first or second grade for a total of two years are exempt, as well. Basically, no special education students have to meet state standards.

Most states with retention and exemption laws include categories similar to those included in the Florida law to get around the issue of those with special education needs. Other states, however, allow for teacher or principal recommendations as an exemption category. Georgia is the only state that allows for a parental appeal of retention. Many state policies also include contingencies for retention. They may, for example, require that the child is retained if he or she does not participate in a summer school intervention plan. A child may also be promoted only if he or she receives remediation at the next grade level.

Most retention takes place in kindergarten through third grade. Some states do not have policies that allow retention at higher grade levels. Of those that do, it’s notable that West Virginia’s statute also requires retention in the third through eighth grade. Texas children can be retained in grades three, five, and eight if they do not perform at required levels on reading and mathematics exams. Although the state of New York does not have a retention policy, New York City established a policy for grades three, five, seven and eight with proficiency required in English Language Arts or mathematics.

In the United States, there are two identified spikes in retention rates by age. Students are statistically most likely to be retained at the age of six or at the age of twelve. Retention takes place at the high school level, too, precipitated by performance on high school exit exams. In this case, young people unable to pass an exam by the time they complete twelfth grade do not receive a diploma. This is a form of retention, too, in that students are not able to move to the next level, whether it is career or college entry. Currently, twenty-six states have high school exit exams.

Although high school exit exams vary from state to state regarding content tested and opportunities for retakes, most states administer exams that cover reading, writing, and mathematics at levels that should have been addressed by tenth grade. Some states allow students to retake these exams and some allow for alternative exams, alternative routes to graduation, and remediation programs for students who are unable to pass the initial administration of the exam. Minnesota, Oregon, and Texas have specific alternate routes to graduation for English Language Learners who have been in the United States for a limited number of years. All states provide for modified or alternate assessment for students with disabilities, as well as waivers.

How does your state compare to others in terms of retention? Do you agree with the current policy in place for your particular state?

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