Retention vs. Social Promotion

School Administrator, August, 1998 by Donna Harrington-Lueker

Schools face pressure to hold back students, but research yields little support for such actions

After nearly two years of a strict new promotion policy, 8th graders in Durham, N.C., already know the drill: If they're not performing at grade level or better on North Carolina's end-of-grade tests in reading and mathematics, they run the risk of being held back.

This past summer, in fact, 661 students--nearly one of every three 8th graders in the district--were required to attend summer school because of failing test scores. If these students make sufficient progress, they'll become 9th graders this fall. If not, they'll stay in the 8th grade another year.

Nor are Durham's 8th graders the only students facing retention. This past summer, more than 700 5th graders had to meet similarly strict requirements. Next year, 2nd graders could be affected.

"We just believe that if you assess children earlier, you'll be able to identify more of their needs," David Holdzkom, the district's assistant superintendent of research, development and accountability, says of Durham's approach.

Full-Speed Ahead

Nationwide, a growing number of school districts have adopted retention policies, often abandoning social promotion programs that pushed students ahead with their peers regardless of achievement and putting in place strict new promotion standards.

The Chicago Public Schools has led the way. In 1997, after passing a get-tough retention policy, the district identified 42,000 students who were at risk of being retained because they were nor performing at grade level in reading and mathematics on standardized tests. Of those students, 3,000 8th graders were not allowed to start high school last fall. This year, the school system has targeted 130,000 students in the 3rd, 6th, and 8th grades who are at risk of being held back.

In New York City, too, Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew has asked the school board to overturn its 10-year-old social promotion policy and hold back 4th and 7th graders who perform poorly. If the school board agrees, the policy could begin in the year 2000.

Last spring, too, Congress introduced legislation that would pump $1.5 billion into 50 high-poverty urban and rural school districts on the condition that the districts adopt high standards and eliminate social promotion.

Schools in Gwinnett County and Fulton County, Ga., Fairfax County, Va., Oakland, Calif., Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, Corpus Christi, Texas, and Springfield, Mass., are also either considering strict promotion requirements or already have done so.

"We have to have some gateways or benchmarks," says Springfield Superintendent Peter Negroni of that district's efforts. In Springfield, that's meant making summer school a condition for promotion for 3rd, 6th, and 9th graders who haven't kept pace with their peers.

States have responded as well. In Texas, more than 16,000 seniors failed to graduate this year because they did not pass portions of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. In Illinois, many school systems were caught off guard when the state schools superintendent this year put an end to social promotion and set new standards for graduation and promotion. And in Virginia, which has adopted strict statewide content standards and assessments, state officials are urging schools to have students repeat a grade if they fail state exams given for the first time this past spring.

"There's just been a huge swing of the pendulum," says Arthur J. Reynolds, a professor of social work in the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison of the new emphasis on retention.

A Failed Practice?

The renewed interest in retention has many educators concerned, though. State legislators and other policymakers have increasingly adopted the view that accountability and retention go hand in hand. And, many acknowledge there is a commonsense argument for retaining students in grade.

"If we continue to promote students who aren't making the grade, where are they going to be later on?" asks Veronica White, a research analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "If they're not reading at grade level, you're going to pay for it one way or the other."

A study of elementary school students in the Baltimore Public Schools has also suggested that students are not necessarily helped by the practice. Though these students, who were retained for only one year, didn't completely catch up with their peers, their test scores, grades and self-esteem did increase, the study shows.

"It's far from the ideal solution," says Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University and the director of the study, which has tracked nearly 800 Baltimore City students for the last 16 years. But it does "buy them extra time. ... It's an opportunity for them to consolidate their skills."

At the same time, research has shown consistently that one of the strongest predictors of students' dropping out of school is the number of times a child has been retained in grade, many educators say.