Alternatives to Grade Retention

School Administrator, August, 1998 by Linda Darling-Hammond

In many schools, the use of multi-age classrooms has eliminated the need for grade retention, as teachers have learned to support student development over the longer term.

Studies show that children in multi-age classrooms show academic progress over time that equals or exceeds that of their peers in same-age classrooms. They also exhibit better self concepts, improved attitudes toward school and a general improvement in social abilities, demonstrating more cooperation and less aggression and competitiveness than students in age-segregated classes.

Teachers get to know individual children and families better because of the longer time they spend together. Younger children learn routines and receive help from older children, who reinforce their own learning and develop greater responsibility in the process. Children also benefit from the consistency in the environment from year to year, which frees up their energies for academic work.

Targeted Services

Census Bureau data show that in 1995 more than a third of children with learning disabilities had repeated at least one grade in school. However, research suggests that most were not helped and many were harmed by this solution to their problems. While there is a growing consensus that the last decade's approaches to the provision of special education and other categorical services have become problematic, appropriately targeted services are still needed for many students.

Serious efforts are needed to correct the flawed identification practices, fragmented and ineffective service delivery models and undertraining of personnel that leave many special-needs children in low-quality settings with watered-down curriculum from which there is no productive exit.

However, there are circumstances in which individual students have special learning needs that are not well-addressed in regular classroom settings, even by teachers who are generally successful and who work in settings that are supportive of student growth. For every horror story about inappropriate placement and teaching, there are success stories about students who were helped to learn by special services that were well targeted to their specific learning needs and delivered by well-prepared teachers with the necessary skills.

For the estimated 10 to 20 percent of students who have visual/perceptual disabilities similar to dyslexia, for example, such specific assistance is essential to success throughout the school career. In addition, most students who are identified as failing in the early grades are struggling in the area of literacy development, which is a key to school success from the first years on.

Programs like Reading Recovery and Success for All include one-to-one assistance models in which specially trained teachers work intensely with students in the early grades who are having difficulty learning to read. Both have been found to be effective in helping students gain the skills that make them successful and confident readers, including students whose first language is not English and many who are or would otherwise have been identified for special education.