public education

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

Pass or Fail: Teacher Effectiveness as Prevention

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?

Retaining or socially promoting a student takes a simplistic approach to education that is outdated and harmful. Finding alternatives to avoid both is imperative and entirely possible in today’s educational climate. Perhaps the most influential alternative to social promotion and retention is effective teaching and teachers who are willing to go the extra mile to make sure students are up to speed.

Some teachers may need professional development to help them diversify their approach to meet the instructional needs of lower performing students. Protheroe points to examples like the Metro Nashville Public Schools, who have established a comprehensive program for professional development, supporting veteran and, especially, new teachers who serve in high-poverty areas. The program includes work on the so-called Ruby Payne Framework to improve teacher understanding of poverty. There is also, according to Holt and Garcia, some important training with differentiated instruction and the Dignity with Discipline program.

Buena Vista Elementary, which is under the Metro Nashville umbrella, is a striking example of the success of these types of involvements. The school is just a few miles from downtown Nashville, in an area plagued by poverty and underdevelopment. A third of the students are homeless and live in one of the numerous shelters nearby. Violence is common, and almost all of the students receive free or reduced-fee lunches.

Despite the inherent difficulties of running a school in such a disadvantaged area, Buena Vista is a vibrant and thriving environment. Every student has a netbook, and there is an iPad for every two students. There are two teachers for every classroom (one is usually a student teacher on a paid placement), as well as a highly qualified phalanx of support staff on call.

The principal, Michelle McVicker, is focused on raising the students’ math and language arts skills. She ensures that each student has a goal and knows what he or she is working toward. “You should be able to ask any student what his or her math and reading goals are and get an answer,” she says and demonstrates that she means it by pulling a student out of a classroom and eliciting the answers.

In the “War Room,” every student’s goal, as well as their current data status, is captured and posted on a wall, with color charts indicating which ones are still in need of help, from blue (advanced), through green (proficient) and yellow (basic), to below basic (red). Two years ago, Buena Vista was considered a failing school. Nearly every card was in the red zone.

McVicker was hired and given free rein to acquire the tools she needed to get the school out of the red. Some of these were technological – as well as computers, classes use Smart Boards and projectors – but she also hired a fresh crew of teachers, commenting: “Because my teachers are all new, they have no bad habits to break.”

The majority of the cards in the War Room are now in the green and yellow zone. The turnaround is well under way.

Protheroe discusses changes to grouping practices and considers how some schools have moved toward increased use of multiage classrooms, with students of different ages grouped together in the classroom to enable continuous progress rather than have to worry about promotion year to year. Specific strategies include interventions to accelerate learning, such as strategies to help students “double-dose” in reading and math instruction to address the problem associated with providing remediation.

Protheroe suggests identifying struggling students and focusing attention on them early, doing whatever can be done to extend learning time, and taking a student’s socio-economic status into consideration when working with them. Beyond these measures, Protheroe also identifies extended learning time as an alternative to retention. Roderick, Engel, and Nagaoka reference the comprehensive evaluation conducted at Chicago Public Schools via the Summer Bridge program. This program found that test scores improved among third, sixth, and eighth graders.

The largest gains were among the sixth and eighth graders. A total of ninety hours of instruction were offered at summer school for third through sixth graders: three hours per day for six weeks. Eighth graders received 140 hours of instruction, attending four hours per day for seven weeks. Evaluations also identified several factors that were associated with larger gains, such as assigning students to teachers who had worked with them before. Teachers reported being more likely to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of the individual student since they were better informed of those needs.

Researchers studying this and other similar afterschool programs have determined that such systems for additional instruction tend to be more successful when there is a careful assessment of the individual student needs and designing of instruction to address those needs. Afterschool and regular day teachers were better able to support students when they communicated with each other about progress and problems.

At the same time, it is also important that the staff at afterschool programs have the knowledge to apply instructional strategies that support the student’s work efforts. Poggi notes that special professional development may well be required to provide this level of knowledge and skill to staff.

Interventions to accelerate learning are catalyzed by efforts to increase the effectiveness of teachers and extend learning time. Ultimately, a combination of these efforts proves most successful as a retention or social promotion alternative.

Click here to read all my suggestions for alternatives to social promotion and retention.

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

Pass or Fail: Mentoring To End Social Promotion and Retention

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?

When parents aren’t able to bridge the gap at home when it comes to education, strong mentors can make a difference in how much students learn.

Emma came from a low-income background and struggled with family issues. She joined a mentoring program and was partnered with Sarah. They have now been friends for more than 12 years. Though the inequality inherent in mentoring has been mentioned by some as problematic, in many cases mentoring can be life-changing. In the case of Emma and Sarah, the relationship was mutually beneficial. They would often go to the local Barnes & Noble, where they would sit under a brightly painted artificial tree and read to each other for hours.

Though the relationship was certainly effective in boosting Emma’s reading skills, it had other benefits as well. At one point, when Emma was six years old, she had to call 911 after her mother’s former boyfriend broke into the house. Sarah helped Emma deal with the call and the repercussions. Later, Emma chose to leave her father’s home, where she’d lived for twelve years, and move to her mother’s home two hours away. Sarah helped her in that decision and supported her in the move.

Sarah and Emma also have a lot of fun together, eating out and visiting amusement parks. These fun times do not, however, keep Sarah, the Director of Admissions at Vermont Commons School, from maintaining a focus on Emma’s schoolwork. Emma says, “Yeah, Sarah is always asking me about school and my homework. She always tells me that doing well in school and working toward my future are the most important things. She motivates me to do my best in school.” And this focus has worked: Emma is on the honor roll and has started looking at colleges.

The benefits go both ways. Sarah says, “I don’t have kids of my own, so I have been able to be a sort of second mom to Emma in a lot of ways. And she is just so amazing and fun to be with; I can’t imagine my life without her. My parents instilled in me the importance of giving back. And although I have been on many organizations’ boards over the years, being a mentor to Emma is without question the best thing I have ever done in my life.”

As the story of Emma and Sarah indicates, mentoring can have an enormous impact on the lives of disadvantaged students and those who mentor them. Karcher identifies mentoring as a process based on concepts of attachment theory – how individuals relate to one another and what sense of connection they have based on their relationship. The related concepts also provide evidence to demonstrate the extent to which mentoring can help reengage adolescents who have detached or disengaged from the educational process. Although counseling and mentoring need not be limited to adolescent students, we can assume this is the group most at risk.

Encouraging mentoring on school campuses is one strategy for reengaging adolescent students who have become disconnected from school due to a variety of experiences. The use of mentors should be given considerable weight among the supports that can help preclude the need for retention or social promotion.

A collaborative team within the school context can also help identify students who are not performing at grade level. The collaboration of a variety of stakeholders concerned about the welfare of individual students can identify struggling students sooner and trigger remedial interventions that can prevent damage from compounding itself. Wells et al. found that counselors accurately identified those students on a school campus who were at risk, and were able to determine those who might benefit from interventions. They emphasized, however, that the mere identification of struggling students was of little use in the absence of an intervention plan.

Click here to read all my suggestions for alternatives to social promotion and retention.

 

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

Pass or Fail: Alternative Strategy Factors to the Pass/Fail System

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?

If previous efforts and employing one or another of the existing alternative strategies have not been effective, we’re left with this question: what can educators do to develop alternatives to retention and social promotion that will actually work?

Several key points emerge from the existing body of research. First and foremost, research shows that alternatives to grading, retention, and social promotion must represent a multi-stage process that has been carefully planned and tested. While this might seem obvious, especially the requirement that a strategy is carefully planned, we should remember the context in which retention and social promotion occurs, a context that includes significant historical dimensions.

Indeed, one need look no further than the Common Core Standards and one of the major complaints about them: that they are woefully under-tested and embody goals and that have little to do with the real educational needs of individual students.

A second key to developing an effective alternative is the identification of those factors that are most crucial to a successful education policy. What do we need to consider when choosing among alternative strategies? What does the research tell us about the most important elements to a strategy that would replace grading, retention, and social promotion?

Most studies of the effects of grade retention and social promotion are limited in one way or another. The statistical power of many such studies is limited by a small sample size. Even the larger studies are often hampered by inconsistencies in education policy or implementation that make it difficult to interpret the results.

Logic also plays a role in showing the problems with grade retention and social promotion, as well as in determining the basic elements of alternative education strategies for failing students. One of the first points to be addressed from the perspective of logic and common sense is the basis for assigning specific grades to student assignments. We should not only consider the grading process itself but, to gain a wider perspective, we should also consider the ultimate objective of the education system, as well as how we can determine whether that objective is being achieved.

Consider the individual that America’s public education system should be producing. What should that individual be prepared for? Why are they getting an education in the first place? And, as we have suggested already, the “why” should play a big part in determining the “how.”

Whatever we decide regarding the ultimate goals of the public education system, it is clear that students must be examined to determine the knowledge and skills that they have learned in school. We do need to test their readiness for college and employment. But the other side of this coin is that the education process must be capable of transferring knowledge and skills in targeted areas.

A successful educational system must not only address student weaknesses, ensuring at least a rudimentary understanding of mathematics, science, languages, literature, writing, and reading comprehension; it must also nurture individual strengths, giving students an opportunity to develop their unique interests and gifts in preparation for a productive career.

We must also consider the non-academic costs of retention and social promotion on students and the education system as a whole. Although they are inherently difficult to gauge, we know that grade retention and social promotion have impacts that are academic, social, economic, and even emotional in nature.

The American School Counseling Association (ASCA) has offered a model for managing grade retention and social promotion that concentrates on the psychosocial aspects of student learning.

The ASCA’s model for developing academic policies and is based on standards intended to be implemented by school counselors. The ASCA’s model assumes that educators would be more effective at bringing about educational reform if they were more aware of the psychosocial factors that impact students.

Recommendations for educators have included input and supports not only from school counselors but also from teachers, administrators, and parents. This is largely because of the recognized need for as many stakeholders as possible to collaborate in support of academically struggling students.

The ASCA identified many barriers to educational reform, including several that explain precisely why collaborative, comprehensive support strategies are needed to support struggling students. Barriers include family stressors, apathy towards school and potential personal success, academic deficiencies, disabilities, poor behavior to support educators’ efforts, and limited access to resources.

Awareness of barriers to academic success can translate into an awareness of strategies for providing support. For instance, educators are in a good position to be able to resolve academic problems in collaboration with students and parents; They can provide insight into learning strategies for the individual student that may help the to help themselves achieve academic success.

Research has shown that retention causes changes in the lives of adolescents who lack coping skills to recover from the experience itself. Indeed, pressures of certain life changes and life events can be the cause of academic struggles. The intertwining of problems inside and outside the schoolroom highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to supporting students. Bullying and teasing can impact retained or socially promoted students and create additional academic struggles. The development and implementation of a comprehensive guidance curriculum by school counselors can support struggling students and minimize the recourse to retention or social promotion.

The second standard of the ASCA model includes programs that address bullying and teasing of students. Such consideration should be an element of a viable strategy for reducing the need for retention or social promotion. Another suggestion from the ASCA is that educators become advocates for students at risk of retention. Effective educators can advocate for students by making other stakeholders in a school aware of particular struggles and the potential need for more significant supports in the classroom.

Click here to read all my suggestions for alternatives to social promotion and retention.

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

Pass or Fail: The Need for Alternative Strategies

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?

If we know that our current pass/fail system isn’t working well — for our students, teachers, families or communities — then what can we do to turn that tide?

Most of the alternatives to retention and social promotion are half measures that do not challenge the validity of the traditional concept of retention. Too many of the established alternatives merely try to mitigate impacts; retention and social promotion are retained as key elements of the educational system.

Difficult and changing ideas, including philosophies and opinions of educators and parents, have complicated the development of effective alternatives to retention and social promotion. Despite the available alternatives, retention, and social promotion remain among the most common strategies for managing academic performance in the current system.

One of the most significant problems with applying alternative strategies is that many are far from comprehensive or well thought out. Many existing alternatives do not show an awareness of the various stakeholders and their potential contributions to a student’s educational success. The fragmented nature of alternative strategies also tends makes it hard to understand the struggles of the individual student.

The so-called self-efficacy theory suggests that adolescents perceive their academic ability regarding their perception of their ability to accomplish tasks. The cognitive function of adolescents reflects the way individuals feel about themselves. Students who experience failure at school have a higher risk of self-efficacy, according to Bandura. There are various other theories, including the family systems theory, which can further explain the risks to adolescents regarding their families and their position in a system that can impact self-efficacy and academic performance.

Although counseling students can help to address problems of low self-esteem, related to poor academic performance, the best interventions do not typically involve parents because of the risk of disrupting the support system as a whole. Furthermore, supports targeting academic and even social needs tend to be limited in scope, largely because there are so many pieces to the puzzle. Most alternative supports are fragmented and limited in their availability because of the degree of specialization (for instance, the availability of resources for specialized instruction in certain areas, or for individualized counseling for students).

Identifying the problems of social promotion specifically, Labaree notes that social promotion lowers the promotional standards in schools. The National Commission on Excellence in Education suggests that this both reflects and encourages the general decline of standards in American society. Labaree also notes that within the school system, a policy of social promotion symbolizes a more general lack of commitment to student achievement.

Establishing low minimum achievement levels for promotion is also, Richard Ebel suggests, a factor that fosters lower achievement expectations. Lowering the “floor” for achievement tends to lower the “ceiling” as well. Perhaps inevitably, there are some who consider social promotion a form of academic dishonesty. It can lead to accusations that schools are rewarding students for lack of accomplishment, instilling an inflated sense of their capabilities and a poor appreciation of the importance of hard work.

Ebel suggests that more rigorous promotional standards are effective at motivating stakeholders to sustain efforts toward higher levels of achievement. Using different standards for promotion can, however, create its problems. For instance, promoting students based on age rather than demonstrated achievement creates significant differences in ability and application of students in different grades.

Disruption becomes more likely when a student perceives a risk of retention. This disruption can affect both the classroom and the student’s family. Academic problems can create severe familial tensions, and these tensions tend to be more pronounced for low-income single parent and minority families, thus becoming entwined with socioeconomic factors.

Click here to read all my suggestions for alternatives to social promotion and retention.

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

Pass or Fail: The Economic Cost of Social Promotion and Retention

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?

Repeating a grade is not that big of a deal, right? Think again! Both social promotion and retention has negative impact on the American economy and social services.

Grade repeaters are more likely to be on public assistance programs, unemployed, or imprisoned. Assessing family income for recent high school dropouts versus recent high school graduates, and looking in particular at households where students were still living at home, the median income for families of dropouts was $12,100, and the median for families of recent high school graduates was $22,700. For college-enrolled high school graduates, the median family income was $34,200.

Although these elements are not to be regarded as causal – low-income families causing dropouts or the need for retention or social promotion – these factors and statistics suggest that large numbers of dropouts come from single-parent households and households run by women. They indicate the social fallout of the education policy. That is, the current system cannot support at-risk students from families where there are challenges in addition to education.

Students who are retained or socially promoted tend to rely more heavily on social services. They usually earn less over the course of their lifetime than those who are not retained or socially promoted. The considerable long-term costs mean society must continue supporting affected students, rather than education serving its purpose and enabling individuals to be self-sufficient. Indeed, a study which examined the NCLB act, warned of a dropout crisis in the United States. The study determined that, every September, approximately 3.5 million young people in America are seen to enter the eighth grade, with roughly 505,000 of this number dropping out over the next four year, an average of more than 2,805 per day of the school year.

Individuals who drop out of school earn approximately $270,000 less than high school graduates over the course of working lives. Having a high school diploma rather than a skills assessment based on a minimum competency test, also helps to determine whether a person can obtain employment and how much money he or she stands to earn. In 1997, the employment rate of men in the twenty-five to thirty-four-year-old range who did not graduate high school was more than twice that of men who did graduate. Among women within that same age-range, the unemployment rate of those without diplomas was three times higher than those with diplomas.

Retention and social promotion policies tend to impact minority students disproportionately, as they are more likely to be retained or socially promoted and drop out of school. Policies of retention and social promotion potentially contribute to racial disparities. The same appears true for low-income families. Although the correlation between retention and social promotion and low-income families is not perhaps as definitive as the link between minorities and these policies, there is still an apparent link and basis for suggesting that there is a connection to poverty and both retention and social promotion policies.

The 21st century, however, is not the age of overt prejudices or even necessarily direct and transparent racial, social, or economic discrimination. The disparities that exist, some of which may be growing more extreme, remain rather well concealed. In structured systems like education, they often go unaddressed until the situation requires affirmative action. The obvious example with education is that the discrimination against a minority or impoverished student, or even one with a learning disability, occurs from the first day they enter the education system and carries on throughout their career.

Indeed, the discrimination remains in effect, largely unnoticed and undetected, until the affected individual is so severely impacted that he or she is unable to demonstrate appropriate understanding of materials that have been the emphasis of their curriculum for a year. There are also secondary costs related to the lack of academic achievement, which includes the individual’s lost interest in school and decreased potential to excel in a variety of areas not requiring demonstration of academic achievement.

Some quantitative assessment of performance of students, as well as educators, administrators, and schools, will always be necessary, and solutions will not be easy to develop or enact. The alternative strategies are complex and require flexible implementation to overcome the subtlety and variety of prejudices that exist. However, the potential of growing costs and the expansion of those costs justifies the efforts.

With the figures at hand, how can anyone suggest social promotion and retention positively impact our economy and society at large?

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

Pass or Fail: Social Promotion and Retention’s Effect on Families & Communities

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?

When a student is subjected to social promotion or retention, he or she is not the only one impacted. If your child was retained, what effect would it have on you, your family and community? Likely, your experiences would be drastically altered, often in quite negative ways.

Families impacted by retention and social promotion policies are disproportionately among already disadvantaged groups. One study identified that children from low-income families, English learners, and Latinos were significantly more likely to be retained than the more demographically “average” student.

Retention rates during the 2009–2010 school year demonstrate that retention is highest among traditionally disadvantaged minorities. Among those deemed most likely to suffer from low academic performance, the rates of retention for black and Hispanic students were 4.2 percent and 2.8 percent, respectively. Among white students, the rate was just 1.5 percent.

Not only are retention and social promotion policies perpetuating social inequalities, they are also enhancing tensions within families by creating the additional stress of academic challenges. Retention and social promotion, or even merely the threat of these practices, places considerable pressure on the individual student.

Among older students, these stresses come into play at a point at which there is naturally occurring strain already. However, even for kindergarteners, retention has been strongly linked to risk factors like poverty, low maternal education, single-parent status, minority status, English language learner (ELL) status, and male gender, with these factors, also associated with poor school readiness.

A study by Wei Wu, Stephen G. West, and Jan N. Hughes explored the relatively short-term and long-term effects of grade retention for first graders and tracked the growth potential in mathematics and reading achievement over four years. They found that there was a large multiethnic sample below the median in literacy at the school entrance, and analyzed the effects of retention on the group studied.

They found that retained children experienced a faster increase in the short term and a faster decrease in the long term in both mathematics and reading achievement than promoted children. Although this data can be difficult to contextualize, the study indicates that retained students are less successful in reading and mathematics than students who are not retained. Retention and social promotion can also exacerbate existing problems within the family structure, although researchers have not examined this thoroughly.

There has been a fair amount of research regarding relationships between families and schools and how, with the right approach, it can prove a key factor in determining the academic success of a student. Similarly, challenges in the relationship between family and school representatives undermine the potential of a student to excel academically. It may be too much to suggest that a problem relationship of this type has a negative impact on a student’s success, but there is certainly indirect evidence that issues undercut a student’s ability to thrive academically.

In the relationship between family and school, the problems of retention or social promotion are sizeable. From the perspective of family members, and parents, in particular, the risk of retention and social promotion is immensely stressful because of the perception that either one of these policies is indicative of a limited future for the affected child. At least in some cases, parents look at retention or social promotion as an indication that their child is either unlikely to ever thrive academically or that their child is not adequately supported by the education system.

Although there are numerous challenges and limitations impacting the process of assessing the costs of retention and social promotion, as we have seen, the general cost of these policies is apparent from the evidence that is available and from a certain logical analysis of the scenario.

The various stakeholders in education, including students, teachers, education policymakers, parents, and employers, are all undermined by the pass or fail mentality of the current system. We disconnect individual students because of these policies. Disconnection from themselves, education, fellow students, teachers and other educators, their families and eventually from the community at large occurs when retention and social promotion comes into play.

Could you handle your child being retained or socially promoted without the stress and consequences of this decision negatively impacting your family? If you answer yes, you’d find yourself in the minority.

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

Pass or Fail: The Indirect Cost of Social Promotion and Retention May Surprise You 

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?

Students who experience social promotion or retention aren’t the only individuals impacted. Put yourself in the shoes of the students who actually passed and the teachers. If you were one of these people, how would you view the student being socially promoted or retained? How is the education system as a whole altered by social promotion and retention?

Passing Students

Students directly affected by retention and social promotion are not the only ones impacted in America’s public schools. Passing students also pay a price for the implementation of social promotion and retention policies. The potential for retention or social promotion is certainly a cause of anxiety. Beyond this cost, however, there are several clearly identified and well-documented costs for “passing” students that relate to the quality of teaching provided when there is a need to support retained or socially promoted students.

Strained relationships between retained students and their non-retained peers are common. Passing and retained students experience significant struggles when trying to socialize together. Although this is not entirely conclusive or indicative of the underlying causes for social withdrawal from retained students, we can infer that there is a risk associated with having a retained student in a classroom. The situation can confuse social experiences for non-retained students and go largely unaddressed by school support systems including counselors, teachers, and administrators.

Teachers

Another obvious cost of retention is to educators. Some teachers feel the concentration on standardized testing of students can serve as a means of “testing” teachers. This places pressure on teachers to instruct in a particular way, to teach to tests, and the like.

The effect standardized testing and graded approaches have on teachers is significant. This method doesn’t target state education agency or middle-level managers in the state bureaucracy, rather standardized testing affects only the educators. Education reform that brought about the pass-or-fail focus included systems of “testing teachers” and evaluating classroom performance. However, assessment was only possible by also prescribing the curriculum and emphasizing the testing of students.

The cost of all this is the quality of education overall and the scope that teachers have to manifest the elements of that quality. When they are impacted by retention and social promotion, teachers are essentially forced to undermine their skills, trivializing and reducing the value of the curriculum content and encouraging the distancing of children from the very purpose of schooling

The Education System

Regardless of the point at which retention occurs, there are direct financial costs associated with retaining a student in the same grade. The average cost of a typical developing and progressing student was approximately $10,700 in 2009–2010. The direct cost to retain approximately 2.3 percent is more than $12 billion per year for the number of students retained. Note that this estimate excludes the costs of any remedial services provided to the students repeating a grade, such as any learning support or specialized services, as well as earnings foregone by retained students due to their delayed entry into the labor market.

Social promotion costs are, of course, much more difficult to track. Having students of varying abilities within a single classroom undermines the ability of teachers to address the needs of all students equally unless they have other specific supports in the classroom. Both retention and social promotion policies cost our education system in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. The quality of education received by children in the United States will remain low so long as the policies of retention and social promotion remain consistent for states and school districts.

A retained child is expected to only make small advances in their educational progress. They are not likely to be that much better off academically, and may fall behind in their general education and overall academic development. Many of these issues can be traced to a loss of confidence in the entire education system as a whole.

Socially promoted students face similar problems, although from a different perspective: they already struggle academically, their schools promote them nevertheless. They not only have to apply skills and knowledge they may not have mastered from the previous year; they’re also expected to follow through and pick up a series of new skills and new knowledge sets at a more advanced level.

Social promotion and retention practices undermine the experiences of all students, teachers and negatively impact the education system overall. With this in mind, how can anyone continue to support these policies?

 

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

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?

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

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

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?

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?

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

Pass or Fail: The Real Cost to the Individual

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?

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?

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