Can state retention policies prod improvement and create a focus on reading?
Despite a century of research, educators continue to argue over whether it helps or hurt students to hold them back when they perform below grade level.
A recent panel sponsored by the Center on Children and Families at Brookings Institution explored the retention vs. social promotion divide. On the side of retention — at least as part of a comprehensive reform strategy — was Harvard professor and Mitt Romney campaign education adviser Martin R. West, who reviewed the research on social promotion and grade retention and the Florida results for a Brookings policy brief.
Since 2003, Florida has required that third graders scoring at the lowest level on state reading tests be held back and given intense remediation.
Compared with similar students who were not retained, the retained kids were 11 percentage points less likely to be retained one year after they were initially held back and roughly 4 percentage points less likely to be retained in each of the following three years, according to West. As a result, students retained in third grade after five years are only 0.7 grade levels behind their peers who were immediately promoted to grade four.
While West agrees that the short-term benefits of retention diminish over time, “the retained students continue to perform markedly better than their promoted peers when tested at the same grade level and, assuming they are as likely to graduate high school, stand to benefit from an additional year of instruction. These factors may increase the likelihood of enduring benefits.”
But researcher and fellow panelist Shane Jimerson of the University of California Santa Barbara opposed retention in any form, explaining, “Among over 1,000 analysis of achievement and adjustment outcomes during the past 100 years, there are few that reveal significant positive effects associated with grade retention.Whereas short-term gains, for instance, during the repeated year and possibly the following year, are occasionally documented, the long-term effects through middle school and high school are either neutral and/or deleterious. And grade retention has emerged as one of the most powerful predictors of high school dropout.”
Jimerson said Florida introduced many interventions along with retention and it has not yet been shown — which all panelists agreed — whether these other elements may have been the causes of the state’s improved reading performance.
He noted that the other elements — summer school, putting retained students with high-performing teachers, an intense reading focus in the classroom, progress monitoring, parent engagement — have been proven to be effective.
“Whereas many of the other components in the Florida program are empirically based and laudable, retention is not,” he said.
Misgivings over retention have not ended the practice.
New data from U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights shows that 2.3 percent of all students in 7,000 districts — which represent 85 percent of all children in U.S. public schools — were retained at the close of the 2009-10 school year.
Only 1 percent of those students were in elementary or middle school, and most repeated kindergarten or the first grade. The federal data found retention highest among black and Hispanic students.
Retaining a student is costly. With the national per-pupil spending average at $10,700, the price tag for retaining 2.3 percent of the 50 million public school students exceeds $12 billion a year. That amount excludes the costs of remedial services for students or their delayed earnings from entering the job market a year later.
But panelist Mary Laura Bragg, who helped craft and put Florida’s prevention/retention policy into practice under then-Gov. Jeb Bush and now works with his nonprofit Foundation for Excellence in Education, said the goal was never retention except as a last resort.
The intent of Florida’s policy was to prod schools into improving their k-3 classes so retention was not necessary in third grade, she said.
A former high school history teacher, Bragg said, “I have seen the vacant stare of a ten10th grader when the student is asked to read out loud or discuss something they read. I’ve been a recipient of victims of social promotion.”
In the four years she directed Florida’s policy, Bragg said she witnessed a “sea change in reading instruction in grades k-3. It’s a shame that the threat of retention is what got elementary schools doing what their primary focus is — to teach kids how to read.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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74 comments Add your comment
Another HS Math Teacher
August 24th, 2012
8:38 pm
Too many retained students are treated to another year of the same instructional methods that did not reach them when they performed poorly enough to meet retention criteria.
When retention is combined with some different approaches that try to match the student’s learning style with appropriate instuction, an improvement generally can be noted. Otherwise you set them up for dropping out in high school.
Solutions
August 24th, 2012
8:38 pm
Some the highest performing schools in the world do not start first grade until the child is eight years old, when they are ready to learn. The students start behind the rest of the world, but within a couple of years, they surpass everyone else. There is also evidence that young brains need more sleep, that it would be better to start school at 11 or 12, rather than the usual 8 or 9. Of course, we will ignore that evidence for the convenience of the adults, both parents and teachers. Fortunately, through automation and computerization, children in the future will be able to work at their own individual pace, starting at whatever age is best for them, and at whatever time of day they naturally wake up. The automated education system will always be up and running, ready when the student is ready, at what ever level the student is capable of performing. Mark my words, such systems are under development now.
Another HS Math Teacher
August 24th, 2012
8:44 pm
Regarding the single diploma currently in place: The absence of meaningful career prep mathematics courses leads many students who know they have no interest in college to do nothing in high school math classes after the second course, in GPS curriculum this is Math 2 which is a blend of the last part of old Algebra 2, circles, right angle trig, and normal curve statistics.
There is an urgent need for students to learn financial transaction oriented mathematics that relate to the career/tech prep courses that do engage their interest.
The GPS curriculum has a math course supposedly devoted to this area, but most University System of Georgia colleges do not recognize this course for 4th math course when determining acceptance to our state’s public colleges.
Lee
August 24th, 2012
8:49 pm
The problem isn’t with retaining students. The problem is that schools will wait until the end of the year to make a decision whether or not to retain. Most do not need to go all the way back to the beginning of the school year – so they get passed on. The problem compounds until one day, they are so far behind, there is no other option but to retain – unless, of course, they get “socially promoted”.
Students don’t just forget everything they know once they enter third grade. They never had it to begin with. Students retained in third probably were struggling in the first nine weeks in first grade.
Here’s a solution – deal with the issue THEN.
…. or you can continue to pass students from grade to grade who cannot do the work and graduate semi-illiterates.
Reality check
August 24th, 2012
9:22 pm
Pride and Joy sounds alot like Good Mother. Do not feed the troll.
FYI
August 24th, 2012
9:33 pm
@ Reality Check. I guess you missed Maureen’s earlier entries about the one being the other, and also this in the recent thread, “State Board Charter Committee” to “5:30″ (P&J?) who complained that Pride and Joy was being censored:
“Maureen Downey, August 22nd, 6:05 pm. @5:30. You must be new here. Pride and Joy is our most prolific commenter and he/she only has contrary opinions. And if you think his/her comments don’t get published, I suggest you do a count. I just did. More than 300 under the current moniker and more than 1,000 under the prior screen name. (There were other screen names, but I just searched the last two.)”
long time educator
August 24th, 2012
9:35 pm
@Let students be students and not student teachers,
I agree with your sentiments about your child and with NCLB, the students who catch on quickly and learn easily are the ones who have gotten the short end of the stick. All the focus under NCLB has been on the helping fence sitters (kids who are right on the line of passing or failing the CRCT) pass the test. All educators were being judged and rewarded or penalized based on this one thing. When something becomes the main thing, it becomes the main thing. As a parent, I would encourage my bright child to be cooperative and help others if the teacher asked, but you are right, someone should be concerned about challenging her to be all she can be. Under NCLB, gifted children are better off in private schools where their gifts are nurtured and appreciated.
HS Math Teacher
August 24th, 2012
11:00 pm
I often reflect on how in recent times more donkey dung has been shoveled at Teachers for them to deal with.
We’re trying to function with a state DOE whose ears are tuned to the intellectual elites who live in an academic cocoon, who are self-proclaimed experts who buy in to dubious research, and don’t know much about teaching conditions in the less affluent areas of Georgia, much less what works and what doesn’t. We’ve been given a one-track pathway for a diploma. That’s like going shopping in an old state-run East German shoe shop, and all the shoes on display are one size, and are ugly as Helga, who manages the place.
School administrators fresh from the Organizational Theory X school of management are ratcheting up the pressure on Teachers, when in reality, it is their jobs that are on the line.
Socially promoted kids who’ve been shuttled through middle grades and have not passed a math course, nor a CRCT in math since the 5th grade. They arrive in high school with that Cheshire cat grin, looking to be rewarded for just showing up. Has anyone ever sat down and wrote a list of all the positive things that would most likely take place in a school system if some sensable measures were effected to remedy promoting ill-prepared, under-educated kids on up the school ladder? I have, and posted on one of these blogs about a year ago.
While I’ve never harped on poor parenting, it is prevalent. I’ve noticed that the kids have better hygene in the last 5 or 6 years, but they are so silly and easily distracted. Poor parenting is just something you have to contend with in a high poverty area. Too many parents are AWOL when it comes to supporting their kids’ education. I never see them during the year.
Sensation-seeking State Legislators trying to come up with ways to stoke the fires up under teachers to get more juice out of the turnip, and all these folks who think that teacher evaluations are going to really make a big difference in educational outcomes. That’s about like messing around with the air cleaner, when all your spark plugs are fouled out.
Blinkard, unimaginative, tax cutting, budget-cutting, right wingers who’ve been sawing into the education money box, and now want to take scarce dollars and divert it into charter schools, even when there are very good public schools in the area.
I’ve never seen more reporting, paperwork, duties, extended lesson plan requirements, endless freaking meetings, Class Keys, RTI, etc.
School discipline ain’t what it used to be, and that’s the prune on top of the stale, butterscotch cake.
We wonder why the educational system is supposedly broken. Whose fault is it really? Do you really think that teachers, or teaching, is the problem?
Thanks for allowing me the rant. I’m feeling better already.
Dr. Monica Henson
August 24th, 2012
11:12 pm
“My concern, Dr. Monica, is that teachers think they can predict a child’s future and write them off. What I mean is, we have teachers today who think a child is a lost cause and give up on teaching the child and not care about them. That ought to be a crime.”
Pride and Joy, I agree wholeheartedly with you.
Katz P. Ajamas
August 25th, 2012
12:42 am
Ignorant parents rear ignorant children.
Dr. Craig Spinks/ Georgians for Educational Excellence
August 25th, 2012
3:13 am
Georgia and the rest of the USA need a cosmic shift in culture from one obsessed with electronics-based entertainment to one determined to use the printed word to realize the noble aspirations which set our nation apart from others throughout our world. When do we start planning for this shift?
mountain man
August 25th, 2012
8:56 am
“You are right….if a child cannot read by third grade, OBVIOUSLY (except to some feel-good socialist theory of the day subscriber) he or she does not need to go to the fourth grade! The idea that this is debatable shows you why the school system has become what it is…..”
Hear, Hear! I agree, skipper!
Social Promotion is one of the main reasons why schools are failing. I had a similar experience in clooege in math – I was not a good student and di not get the basic concepts of calculus, then progressed further and further, and my grades dropped with each succeeding class. Classes build on the ones before them..You can’t be learning to read if you don’t know your alphabet! And with the size of classes nowadays ( and the other issues), teachers can’t spend the extra time trying to “catch up” a student who didn’t learn in the previous grade. So the students fall further and further behind and end up either dropping out or they get an “attendance” diploma that shows businesses that they need to hire only college graduates, not high school graduates.
If you don’t want retention, then examine WHY the child did not learn the required material – I think you will find there are attendance issues, or discipline issues.
mountain man
August 25th, 2012
9:02 am
“Most third grade (or even earlier) teachers can tell you which kids won’t finish.”
Usually it is the ones who have missed 15 days of school that year.
Solutions
August 25th, 2012
9:03 am
I note that from K-12 children are regimented in school, herded like cattle from room to room, guarded constantly “for their own good.” Classes meet everyday, subject matter is spoon fed by the teacher. But something magic happens after 12th grade, when they go to college, classes meet only three times a week, no guards, no regimentation, and no spoon feeding. Yet the subject matter is an order of magnitude more difficult. The successful know that THEY must master the subject working alone, using the lectures to guide them through. Perhaps high school should be run more along those lines than the current humiliation based high school prison system.
ScienceTeacher671
August 25th, 2012
9:52 am
Maureen, the research showing that if children who are falling behind in the very early grades are given intensive remediation as soon as possible, they are more likely to catch up, less likely to fail later, less likely to be diagnosed with learning or behavior disabilities later, etc., is not new.
In fact, the research I’ve seen shows that the earlier the remediation is done, the better, before students start to be seen as (and see themselves as) “failures,” and certainly before 3rd or 4th grade.
This is the research upon which “Response to Intervention” or RTI, is based. Unfortunately, RTI has been horribly mis-implemented in Georgia, as catlady has been saying for months.
Digger
August 25th, 2012
10:59 am
Ignorant parents conceive ignorant children.
Prof
August 25th, 2012
12:26 pm
@ Solutions. There is another factor to college success that you don’t consider: the choice of students by colleges in the first place. K-12 education does not have this choice, but must work with what is sent to them.
bootney farnsworth
August 25th, 2012
3:17 pm
seems Solutions can’t figure out the difference between little children and grown adults.
explains much, IMO
Donna
August 26th, 2012
8:04 pm
Before implementing any policy that affects the lives of students, the primary consideration of educational policy makers should be to first do no harm! Holding kids back is the worst form of educational malpractice. As a former college professor in education, educational research specialist, and a testing and assessment administrator in a large school district, I can fully attest to both the emotional and academic damage that has been done to kids by holding them back. While in rare cases, it MAY have helped, for the vast majority of kids it has caused far more pain and suffering than simply passing them on and providing them with the necessary tutoring or orther assistance to help them gain the skills needed. There are several research papers well worth reading that summarize and document options to retaining kids:
http://www.ericdigests.org/1992-5/literacy.htm,
http://www.3rsplus.com/documents/The_Long-term_Effects_000.pdf, and http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ441895&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ441895.
Ron F.
August 26th, 2012
10:12 pm
Part of the problem is the packed curricula we have even in early grades. Kids are expected to learn a lot without much depth. If you follow the mandated pace with every kid, of course some are left behind. The best option is to group kids by skills, not age, and remove the negative stigma of “failing” or being “held back.” They absolutely shouldn’t be moved just because of age, but retention isn’t definitively better if the kid doesn’t cope well. It’s not an absolute fix. Not to mention the fact that most kids who can’t pass third grade probably didn’t excel in any earlier grade. They should be moved by subject level to where their skills indicate they are.
Charles
August 27th, 2012
10:52 am
As a retired educator of 38 years and an elementary principal most of that time, I studied and debated this issue at length. One 40 year longitudinal study – Light’s Retention Scale – looked at retention from the prospect of when it was successful and when it was not. They came up with 18 indicators that parents and teachers should consider before retaining a child. Retention can be highly successful in very limited circumstances – but only in these cases. It’s worth the study for anyone exploring this option.
Why Is It Either Or?
August 27th, 2012
12:30 pm
@Pride and Joy I do not consider Black History to be a trivial matter. Black history or any history can be incorporated into reading or science. Common Core will require students to focus less on fiction and more on nonfiction. Fiction has been over emphasized in the lower grade levels. This is usually very evident when students hit middle school and struggle. Students will not score well on tests using the new more rigorous standards if all they read is about Spot, Jane, and Dick. Incorporating historical documents and biographies while reading across the curriculum is essential for Common Core and today’s world.
Dekalbite@Pride and joy
August 29th, 2012
10:14 pm
“Save history and social studies for grades three and higher, when the children can read about it and save k-2 for reading, writing and arithmetic.”
But social studies and science requires reading. Who says reading has to be taught exclusive of science and social studies content? When students read about what firemen and policemen do, they learn content and in addition practice reading. This is called getting more bang for your buck.
Reading is reading no matter if it is reading about reptiles or what a doctor does. You learn to be a fluent reader by – well – reading. It’s a combination of processes including practice and acquiring higher level reading/thinking skills and a larger vocabulary. Reading social studies and science content is very valuable in all of the above processes.
Dekalbite
August 29th, 2012
10:25 pm
When I taught 7th grade I could almost always pick out the kids that had been retained. Most of them were more emotionally mature than their grade level peers. They were almost always out of step since they related more to the kids who were 13 than the ones who were 12 because they were 13.
When I would go back to their Kindergarten or First grade teacher, they would inevitably say the child was immature. Well, their maturation rate always catches up – certainly by 6th or 7th grade and there they are – stuck in a lower grade level while their maturity level resides in a older age level.
Early intervention is what is needed more than retention. Most students should be caught up by the end of 3rd grade, but I found many of my retention students happened in Kindergarten and First grade. Maturation rates are quite variable in the elementary school years. Thisis why retention in early grades is often problematic as they get to middle grades.