THE TRUTH ABOUT GRADE LEVEL RETENTION AND SOCIAL PROMOTION:
HOW STATE AND NATIONAL POLICIES ARE DESTROYING THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN YOUTH
Robert R. Lange, Ph.D.
College of Education
University of Central Florida
Truth in Testing Conference, Orlando, Florida: Feb. 14, 2004
The time for comparing the impact of grade level retention and social promotion
has passed. The truth is that grade level retention produces no academic or
social benefit for students, schools or the nation. The facts are clear. Grade
level retention results in serious harm and destroys the academic future for
most of its victims. At the same time simple social promotion is not an adequate
response in itself. Little is gained if slower learning students and even faster
learning students have their learning needs abandoned in exchange for limited
grade level instruction that is either beyond them or below their level of
academic achievement. It is time for focusing on student learning needs and
providing students with opportunities to optimize learning, regardless of the
level at which they have achieved.
Inappropriate and unethical use of high stakes tests and shortsighted
accountability strategies are destroying the future for today’s youth and the
nation. Educators are being forced to inflict permanent lifelong damage on some
students because of mandatory grade level retention. Teachers are being forced
to restrict the curriculum and hinder the academic growth of faster learning
students.
It is time for those who know the truth to stand up and inform, to organize and
to resist the continued abuse being forced on students, teachers, and school
administrators. Many educational related professional organizations have taken
strong positions apposed to the use of single tests such as Florida’s FCAT as
the basis for major decisions about students and for grading teachers and
schools. Two examples include the Position Statement on Student Grade Retention
and Social Promotion published by the National Association of School
Psychologists and the Code of Professional Responsibilities in Educational
Measurement published by the National Council on Measurement in Education.
Numerous researchers and policy analysts have published an almost countless
number of reports and position statements that document the negative results of
grade level retention and use of a single test for making major decisions about
students, teachers, principals, and schools.
Political leaders, and people of influence have misinterpreted and twisted the
true meaning of the major policy statement on Taking Responsibility for Ending
Social Promotion: A Guide for Educators and State and Local Leaders that was
produced under the direction of Secretary of Education, Richard Riley during the
Clinton administration. The details of the policy statement called for using
several different methods to help all students achieve their potential. It never
advocated an increase in grade level retention. The No Child Left Behind Act of
the Bush administration does not require the use of grade level retention.
Current uses of the FCAT in Florida and similar single tests in other states
have had the opposite of the stated purposes of the policies of both
administrations. Greater and greater numbers of students are, in fact, being
left behind.
The general public needs to be informed and pressure needs to be placed on
political and social leaders to correct the current abuses. Too often
researchers and school personnel who know the truth have been threatened and
intimidated when they attempt to resist or inform the public. As has always been
the case, once policies are in place no truth about their impact will go
unpunished.
Newspaper editors and reporters need to be forced to tell the truth. It is
amazing that a recent editor of a large circulation newspaper, the Orlando
Sentinel was quoted as saying “ The most important role a newspaper has is the
public-watchdog role that it plays.” Yet, it was that specific newspaper that
goaded the Florida State Legislature into creating new legislation forcing
educators to retain students who scored below a specific level on the FCAT test.
It would have taken very little effort on the part of the staff writers to
discover the vast amount of literature that demonstrated the true destructive
impact of those actions.
GRADE LEVEL RETENTION
The true impact of grade level retention or the act of making a child repeat a
grade in school has been overlooked by parents, the general public, and majority
of school teachers and school administrators. It isn’t that the truth has been
tucked into some secret place and not available to most people. The truth has
been very public, freely circulated in public view and loudly proclaimed by
specialists. Yet, the truth has been widely ignored, generally doubted, and
misrepresented. People of influence have circulated beliefs and installed
policies based on ideas that are the exact opposite of what is known to be true.
Grade level retention is one of those common social evils that most people just
don’t want to acknowledge.
Grade level retention has been a practice in American schools for over a
century. During that time, retention has been one of the most widely researched
practices in the history of schooling. Researchers have most always reported
remarkably similar findings. For most children, repeating a grade in school has
no positive benefit and often results in serious long-term damage to students’
academic achievement and social development. It is a form of sanctioned child
abuse. Sure, there are a few exceptions to the general truth, but the exceptions
represent a very small proportion of the retained children.
IMPACT ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
Based on the numerous studies that have compared retained students with similar
students who were promoted, several common results have been reported. Among
these are the following:
1. Retained students show a slight academic improvement during the second
year in the same grade. But, the gain is lost within one or two years.
2. By the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade most students who were retained have an
academic achievement level below the level they likely would have achieved
if they would have been promoted rather then retained. That is, grade level
retention most often damaged future learning.
3. The grade in school at the time of grade retention does not alter the long
term academic impact. Retention during kindergarten, or first grade has the
same negative impact as it would at second, third, or fourth grade and later.
4. Youth who were retained one or two times during their school years most often
drop out of school. Youth who are one or two years older then their classmates
begin to drop out of school at the ninth and tenth grade. Currently, large
numbers of students who were retained one or more times and leave middle school
never get beyond grade nine. Very few ever finish the twelfth grade.
IMPACT ON SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT AND BEHAVIOR
Among the commonly reported findings are:
5. Retained students more often develop disruptive and antisocial behaviors.
6. Retained students tend to have difficulty in developing social relationships
with younger classmates.
7. Retained students develop poor self-concepts.
IMPACT ON POST SCHOOL LIFE
Although there are few studies of the life-long impact of grade level retention,
the limited number of interpretations include:
8. As adults, people who were retained at least once have a harder time finding
and holding jobs. They work in lower paying jobs then do their similar age
peers.
9. As adults, those retained are more likely to spend part of their life in jail
and
have more social and family problems.
COMPLEX CAUSES
Grade level retention has not been identified as the single or only cause of the
negative consequences listed above. Human life is far too complex to link
long-term consequences to a single cause. But it is clear that grade level
retention is one of the major factors that lead to a complex chain of negative
life experiences that could have been avoided or at least reduced.
WHO IS RETAINED AT GRADE LEVEL
The published documentation is clear. Specific groups of children are more
likely to be retained then others. Children are more likely to retained if they
are:
10. male rather then female
11. self identified as a member of a minority ethnic group
12. born into a lower income family
13. children who speak a language other then English in their home
WHY GRADE RETENTION CONTINUES TO BE A COMMON PRACTICE
Researchers and educators who have studied the results of grade level retention
frequently express amazement about the continued widespread use of a practice
that has been consistently shown to be wrong and to have such negative results.
Several researchers have offered their ideas about why the research has had
little or no impact on the practice of retention. The reasons include the
following:
14. Teachers and school principles usually track retained students for one year.
The retained students make some progress during that year. The real three to
four year impact is not observed or not seen as connected to the retention.
15. Large class sizes (20 or more students) have made it difficult for teachers
to meet the learning needs of students functioning at widely different levels
and with widely different learning styles. Schools have been forced to operate a
one size fits all program. Schools focus on “grade level” teaching and have
ignored the needs of some students. Both fast learners and slow learners have
been the least well served.
16. Policy leaders have based their judgment more on personal opinion rather
then on established evidence. For political and personal reasons, no truth or
evidence has an impact after a policy is established. Political leaders tend to
be more interested in saving face then in the true impact of their actions.
17. Parents and the general public have long believed that the same level of
student academic learning can be achieved by every child, in the same way and in
the same amount of time. Learning is not easily observed. People like to believe
that all children can be average or above. The fact that children of the same
age have widely different height, weight, and other physical features has failed
to influence the notion the children of the same age can have widely different
learning styles, learning rates, and different areas of learning strengths and
weaknesses.
18. Too few people are aware of the method used to establish grade level
standards. Most often, grade level standards are set at the level that divides
the faster learning students from the slower learning students, with fifty
percent of the students in each group. The fact is that half of the students at
each grade level will be below the grade level average in physical height, and
half of the students at each grade level will be below the grade level average
or grade level standard in academic ability.
19. Most of the published information about the true impact of grade level
retention is hidden in professional journals that are read only by the
researchers who write for those journals and their graduate students.
Researchers seldom write for the public.
20. In general, newspaper editors and reporters have misinformed the public
about school issues, especially accountability and grade level retention.
They write articles and policy positions based on incomplete information and
based on opinion rather then on research based findings. Although they openly
ask for school programs based on established research, they promote policies
that too often are contrary to established truth based on research.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Most every professional organization related to education and most all
researchers who have studied the impact of accountability and assessment have
condemned the use of standards and tests as a means for rewarding and punishing
students, teachers, principals and school systems. It is not the standards and
the assessments that are necessarily bad, it is the misuse of standards and
assessments that is so very destructive.
The current ill conceived accountability and assessment trend as represented by
Florida’s use of FCAT scores and many interpretations of the No Child Left
Behind Act are resulting in the gradual sabotage of the American free society by
destroying the future of too many of today’s youth. No foreign nation or group
of terrorists could do more to harm the future of the United States then we are
doing to ourselves by the current misuse of standards and assessments. Not only
is grade retention destructive for youth, the use of student assessments to
judge teachers and to assign grades to schools or school systems is driving an
ever increasing number of quality teachers out of teaching.
APPROPRIATE USES OF STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENTS
Numerous authors have documented successful efforts designed to assist students
achieve at their optimal level. Those efforts focus on keeping students together
with their age peers and helping to ensure that every students makes continual
progress regardless of the level at which they are performing. Those practices
require the recognition of the natural wide variation in abilities and the
variability in strengths and weaknesses that exist in every group of youth. The
best practices are based on the fact that youth of a given age can not be
educated as if they were clones all with the same abilities. Teaching that is
based only on a standard grade level curriculum fails to serve both fast
learners and slow learners.
Standards ought to be seen as broad goals and assessments used as a basis for
planning learning opportunities for students. Every student ought to be given
the opportunity to experience success. For some students, the rate of
achievement is very fast, much above average. With appropriate uses of standards
and assessments, faster learning students are permitted to advance rather then
being forced to prepare for a test. The curriculum is not limited to what will
be included on a state test. Slower learning students are given the time they
need to achieve critical skills regardless of the age level of their class
peers. Students learn critical reading or other skills more effectively when
they are placed with age peers then they do with younger students.
Effective teaching takes into account the different ways in which students
learn. Several researchers have noted that, in general, many young boys learn in
ways quite differently then most young girls. But there are wide variations in
the methods of learning, the rate of learning, and the level of achievement
within each group of young boys and each group of young girls. Teachers and
schools must be given the resources they need in order to best serve the
learning needs of all students.
CONDITIONS NEEDED TO PROPERLY USE STANDARDS AND ASSESSMENTS
The policy statement, Taking Responsibility for Ending Social Promotion: A Guide
for Educators and State and Local Leaders, is often seen as a major stimulus for
the current misuse of grade level retention and testing. However, that policy
statement very specifically noted the negative results of grade level retention.
The authors outlined a long list of strategies that could be used to help slower
learners make greater levels of progress. The recommendations called for an end
to instructional abandonment of students that did not learn in the existing
educational program.
Many of the authors who have noted the negative results of the inappropriate
uses of standards and assessments have also provided detailed information about
strategies that have been shown to best serve students, teachers, and school
systems. Among the commonly listed strategies include lower numbers of students
per teacher (20 or fewer), extended day programs, extended year programs and
increased school-parent interaction. Other authors have noted that major changes
in teaching strategies are needed and have demonstrated strategies they have
found to be effective.
The only moral choice for persons who know the truth is to stand up, inform the
general public and organize a strong reform movement. One of two things must
happen, either a) the laws and regulations that cause misuse of assessment and
accountability must by modified to reflect what is known about the true and
appropriate use of such information or b) the assessments and accountability
laws and tests must be destroyed.
SPECIAL NOTE ON RESOURCES
This position statement is intended to alert those who want to protect the
future of Florida’s and America’s youth about the evils that are taking place
because of the common misuse of standards and assessments. It is also intended
to note that there are effective methods for dealing with learning problems. The
list of resources is only a beginning and is not exhaustive. Persons interested
in more complete details are encouraged to begin with the limited list of
internet resources and print resources listed below. Most of the listed items
provide lists of references and links that can be used for added information.
RESOURCES
INTERNET RESOURCES
Assessment Reform Network – provides short summaries and links to related
resources.
http://www.fairtest.org
Glasser, William, A New Look at School Failure and School Success.
Describes an alternative approach to teaching.
http://indigo.ie/~irti/kappan.htm
Jimerson, Shane, Beyond Grade Retention and Social Promotion
This page provides links to several of Dr. Jimerson’s recent research reports
and summaries of research on the impact of student retention in grade
http://www.education.ucsb.edu/jimerson/retention/
http://www.education.ucsb.edu/schpsych/CSP-Journal/PDF/CSP.2001(volume-6).pdf
A link to a full issue of The California School Psychologist journal. You will
need to scroll to the article by Dr. Jimerson
National Association of School Psychologists – Position Statement on Student
Grade Retention and Social Promotion
http://www.nasponline.org/information
Click on “position papers” several statements are listed, find “student grade
retention and social promotion” and click on “html”
North West Regional Educational Laboratory, When Students Don’t Succeed:
Shedding Light on Grade Retention.
The document contains several sections. Each section can be reached by clicking
on the heading at the left of the page.
http://www.nwrel.org/request/july99/article1.html
Riley, Richard and others. Taking Responsibility for Ending Social Promotion: A
guide For Educators and State and Local Leaders.
The large document has several
sections and a very long list of references.
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/socialpromotion
Slavin, Robert and others, Preventing Early School Failure: What Works Click on
“research” this document is one of several reports related to the topic. The
document contains several good references.
http://www.successforall.net
PRINT RESOURCES
An exhaustive lists of print resources would be extremely long. Four selected
Documents are listed below.
National Council on Measurement in Education, Code of Responsibilities in
Educational Measurement. The document is available from the NCME, 1230
Seventeenth Street, NW Washington, DC 20036-3078
Darling-Hammond, Linda and Falk, Beverly , Using Standards and Assessments To
Support Student Learning, published in the Nov., 1997 issue of Phi Delta Kappan,
a professional journal. The document is well written and perhaps one of the best
policy statements related to ethical and proper use of Standards and Assessments
in education.
Jimerson, Shane Two more technical and lengthy documents about the research
on the effects of grade level retention. Both documents are available from
professional journals.
a) On the Failure of Failure: Examining the Association Bewteen Early Grade
Retention and Education and Employment Outcomes During Late Adolescence. Journal
of Social Psychology Vol. 37, No. 3, (1999) pp. 243-272.
b) Meta-analysis of Grade Retention Research: Implications for Practice in the
21st Century. School Psychology Review Vol. 30, No. 3 (2001) pp. 420-437.
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