Should low-achieving kids be promoted or held back?
Daniel Willingham with a blog post on the latest research regarding social promotion. My big problem with all of these studies is that they don't measure what happens to the ENTIRE SYSTEM when the message goes out that the old game of failing to educate kids and then passing them along is halted. In NYC, when Joel Klein put an end to this, 15% of students failed the promotion test (though most, I recall, took summer school and were eventually promoted with their class), but within a year or two, it was down to 2%. I've said it before and I'll say it again: there should be a national law that says ALL children who are Below Basic readers – on a REAL test like NAEP, not the dumbed down state tests – must repeat third grade until they are at least Basic. And then, eventually, I'd raise the bar to Proficient.
One of the most troubling problems concerns the promotion or retention of low-achieving kids. It doesn't seem sensible to promote the child to the next grade if he's terribly far behind. But if he is asked to repeat a grade, isn't there are high likelihood that he will conclude he's not cut out for school?
Until recently, comparisons of kids who were promoted and kids who were retained indicated that retention didn't seem to help academic achievement, and in fact likely hurt. So the best practice seemed to be to promote kids to the next grade, but to try to provide extra academic support for them to handle the work.
But new studies indicate that academic outcomes for kids who are retained may be better than was previously thought, although still not what we would hope.
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Should low-achieving kids be promoted or held back?
Daniel Willingham, 03/21/2012
One of the most troubling problems concerns the promotion or retention of low-achieving kids. It doesn't seem sensible to promote the child to the next grade if he's terribly far behind. But if he is asked to repeat a grade, isn't there are high likelihood that he will conclude he's not cut out for school?
posted by Whitney Tilson at 4:40 PM
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