retention

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

Pass or Fail: The Real Cost of Student 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?

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?

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

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

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?

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

Pass or Fail: Effective Retention Polices – The Chicago Case

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?

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?

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

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

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?

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

Pass or Fail: Retention and its Roots in Early American Public Education

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?

Today’s practice of retaining students is a far cry from what took place in America’s earliest public school classrooms. 

Before assessing the American education system, it is necessary to understand where our roots lie. We must consider how public education became enshrined in the United States, what the objectives of public education were, how the public education system in the United States was developed, and what efforts have been made to reform the system since its inception.

The United States should be viewed from an educational standpoint as an essentially European-derived enterprise. In particular, because of the religious make-up of the first European settlers, we have a strong Protestant lineage. The goal of America’s public education system has been relatively consistent: to produce satisfying outcomes in eight broad categories:

  1. Basic academic knowledge and skills, including reading, writing, math skills, and knowledge of science and history.
  2. Critical thinking and problem-solving abilities, including the ability to analyze information and apply knowledge to new situations.
  3. Appreciation of the arts and literature, including participation in and appreciation of musical, visual, and performing arts as well as cultivation of a love of literature.
  4. Preparation for skilled employment, including appropriate workplace qualifications.
  5. Social skills and a strong work ethic, including communication skills, a feeling of personal responsibility, and the ability to work with and interact with others from varied backgrounds.
  6. Citizenship and community responsibility, including public ethics and knowledge of how government works.
  7. Physical health, including lifelong exercise and healthy eating habits.
  8. Emotional health, including self-confidence and respect for self and others.

In 1749 Benjamin Franklin pioneered American thinking on education by proposing that Pennsylvania establish a public academy of education for adolescents. Franklin suggested that such an institution should also emphasize physical fitness, as well as academics. A man of many ideas and insights, Franklin also spoke up on the importance of studying history, because it taught students temperance, order, frugality, and perseverance. Franklin thought schools should require competence in reading, arithmetic, and science, and that they should be accountable for teaching these skills. However, Franklin and his contemporaries did not envision assessments of the quality of educational institutions based on how well students acquired the skills and knowledge.

The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, held yet a slightly different view on education, suggesting that universal education would assist in socializing citizens, helping them to accept the values of their rulers, but also preparing young people for a “law-abiding” adulthood.

Falling somewhere between the aforementioned two perspectives was George Washington, who contended in his first State of the Union address that Congress should promote schools that taught citizens how “to value their own rights.” Washington recognized that public opinion makes policy in a democracy and, as a result, “it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” In none of these instances, though, does it appear that rigid standards for reading, writing, and arithmetic are the foundation for accountability. Schools were expected to go well beyond such basic provisions and, in effect, become responsible for the creation of productive, well-informed, and engaged citizens.

More than 70 years after Franklin’s comments on the components of an optimal public education, Jefferson clarified and elaborated. Jefferson believed a proper education should give all citizens the information they needed to undertake transactions at their businesses. He thought it should enable citizens to calculate for themselves, express their ideas, contracts, and accounts in writing; to improve their morals and faculties via reading, and to understand their duties to their neighbors and country.

The 1780 Massachusetts Constitution, drafted by John Adams, another of the founding fathers, laid out the first legal requirement for public education. This state constitution noted that the duty of the legislative and executive branches would be to maintain public schools. “Wisdom and knowledge,” the document declared, “as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, [is] necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties. In addition to teaching academic subjects, public schools should also be required to include lessons on the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punctuality, sincerity, good humor, and all social affections, and generous sentiments.”

There is clear evidence that the government took to heart much of what the founding fathers had to say on this topic. The 1787 Northwest Ordinance provided funds to new states that allowed them to establish public education systems, declaring that “religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary for good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

Even in the earliest days of America, the notion that public education was a necessity was accepted. Of course, at that time the nation lacked the infrastructure to provide effective access to public education, so such support was mostly theoretical. Still, there were many who came forward in support of a public education system that embraced most, if not all, of the ideas and principles that the founding fathers had set forth.

This basic support was founded on the fact that people believed in access to education as a right — a belief that would be dissected over time to bring us to the retention-social promotion context of today.

 

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