Alternatives to Grade Retention

School Administrator, August, 1998 by Linda Darling-Hammond

Four complementary strategies to improve teaching and learning make more sence than holding students in grade

Many school districts and states across the nation are developing standards for student learning to guide curriculum, teaching and assessment and to provide information to students, families and communities about how students are progressing. Ideally, this information will help schools better address students' learning needs and redress inequalities in access to knowledge.

However, much of the discussion about new standards offers little insight into how schools can ensure students meet them. When policymakers urge that students be held accountable, they frequently call for grade retention and the withholding of diplomas as the primary response to low achievement rather than seeking specific improvements in schooling and teaching practices. The assumption is that consequences will motivate children to achieve, and if they do not, the low-performing students should just keep repeating the material until they get it right.

Yet dozens of studies have found that retaining students actually contributes to greater academic failure, higher levels of dropping out and greater behavioral difficulties rather than leading to success in school (see related story, page 14). Students who are held back actually do worse in the long run than comparable students who are promoted, in part perhaps because they do not receive better or more appropriate teaching when they are retained, and in part because they give up on themselves as learners.

Even small children perceive that being held back is a stigma. One study found that children fear grade retention so much that they cite it No. 3 on their list of anxieties following only the fear of blindness and death of a parent. As Lorne Shepard, a professor at University of Colorado, concluded in her review of the research: "Contrary to popular beliefs, repeating a grade does not help students gain ground academically and has a negative impact on social adjustment and self-esteem."

New York City's Promotional Gates Program, ultimately discontinued in the late 1980s, resulted in 12-year-olds stuck in the 4th grade and 17-year-olds sitting in 8th-grade classrooms because the system had not redesigned teaching and schooling to enable them to succeed.

In their book The Closing Door: Conservative Policy and Black Opportunity, Gary Orfield and Carole Ashkinaze noted of the grade retention policies of the 1980s' accountability era: "Although most of the reforms were popular, the policymakers and educators simply ignored a large body of research showing that they would not produce academic gains and would increase dropout rates. In other words, this was a policy with no probable educational benefits and large costs. The benefits were political and the costs were borne by at-risk students. The damage was psychological as well as educational, increasing the likelihood that at-risk students would drop out before receiving their diplomas; school districts were also hurt by the diversion of resources to repetitive years of education for many students."

Shifting Blame

The premise of grade retention as a solution for poor performance is that the problem, if there is one, resides in the child rather than in the schooling he or she has encountered. Instead of looking carefully at classroom or school practices when students are not achieving, schools typically send students back to repeat the same experience. Little is done to ensure that the experience will be either more appropriate for the individual needs of the child or of higher quality. This is particularly troubling given mounting evidence that children's unequal access to high-quality curriculum and teaching is strongly related to their achievement.

Not only have recent studies found that teacher expertise is by far the single most important determinant of student performance, but low-income, minority and special-needs students are least likely to receive well-qualified, highly effective teachers. Tracking systems often heighten these effects by assigning the least-qualified teachers to the lowest-achieving students year after year.

However, the negative effects of grade retention should not become an argument for social promotion--that is, the practice of moving students through the system without ensuring they acquire the skills they need. If neither retention nor social promotion is effective, what are the alternatives?

There are at least four complementary strategies school administrators can employ:

1. enhancing professional development for teachers to ensure that they have the knowledge and skills they need to teach a wider range of students to meet the standards;

2. redesigning school structures to support more intensive learning;

3. ensuring that targeted supports and services are available for students when they are needed; and

4. employing classroom assessments that better inform teaching.

Skillful Teaching

Highly skilled teachers who know how to use a wide range of successful teaching strategies adapted to diverse learners are, of course, the most important alternative to grade retention. Teaching that is developmentally, cognitively and culturally responsive enables a greater range of students to succeed.