Retention vs. Social Promotion

School Administrator, August, 1998 by Donna Harrington-Lueker

Counterintuitive Findings

"The issue is just highly politicized at this point," says Anne Wheelock, who has written extensively on education issues such as tracking and equity. In such a highly politicized atmosphere, research showing the drawbacks of retention can get lost, many educators say.

"The findings [that retention doesn't work] seem counterintuitive to [many policymakers]," says Wheelock of the current rush to embrace retention. "It just seems so logical to think that one more year will help."

Last fall, too, the American Federation of Teachers called attention to the issue with a national survey of promotion practices. Though some high-profile districts have adopted retention policies, the union found that the opposite practice--social promotion--was "rampant."

According to the AFT report, "Passing on Failure: District Promotion Policies and Practices," school district policies have sent a clear message to schools that social promotion is acceptable. Vague criteria for promotion, lack of uniform grading policies and prohibitions on retention at specific grade levels promote the practice, the report found.

Moreover, school administrators came in for their share of criticism in the publicity that followed the report's release. "The results of that survey confirm what many of us have long suspected: School administrators override teachers' grades and simply promote students from one grade to the next even though those students have failed their classes," John Cole, president of the Texas Federation of Teachers, told the San Angelo Standard-Times.

For David Holdzkom, assistant superintendent for research, development and accountability, in the Durham, N.C., Public Schools, that charge is familiar but unprofitable. "Casting the issue [of social promotion and retention] as teachers upholding the standards against politicians downtown in the central office is not helpful to the debate," says Holdzkom. "It's better to ask, what should be our response to a specific child's needs? ... There's no point in keeping a 16- or 17-year-old 8th grader in middle school if he's failed several times."

Districts also must sort out whether exit exams, especially those required for high school graduation, can withstand civil rights challenges. Twenty-one school districts in North Carolina, including the Durham Public Schools, have been named in a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. According to a spokesman for OCR, the complaint alleges that African-American students score disproportionately below the level needed to pass new competency exams and that districts vary widely in their efforts to raise achievement.

Schools that adopt retention without other supports also run the risk of public disfavor. "I'm wary of people slipping too much into the retention mode, because there's going to be a backlash" when you end up having a 16-year-old in the 8th grade, says Kathy Christie, a policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States.