FAILING TO EDUCATE?

February 1999
		The Clinton administration has proposed a ban on social promotion. Should failing students be forced to repeat a grade?

What should be the role of parents? What about skipping grades? What is the evidence for and against keeping students back? How can teachers identify and help failing students?

June of Westlake, LA, asks : How does the present retention rate compare to rates of 40 years ago? We've seen falling academic performance in international studies… do rates of retention fit into that pattern in any way? What is the attitude toward retention in other countries?   Lorrie Shepard, University of Colorado, responds: Retention rates have ebbed and flowed over the last 40 years, but there has never been a time when there have not been substantial numbers of students retained. A national longitudinal study conducted in the 1980s by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 20% percent of all eighth graders had been retained at least once. The recent National Academy of Sciences report, High States: Testing for Tracking, Promotion, and Graduation (J. P. Heubert & R. M. Hauser, Eds.; http://www.nap.edu), used U.S. Census data to examine trends in retention. "Overall, a large share of each birth cohort now experiences grade retention during elementary school. Among children ages 6 to 8 from 1982 to 1992, age-grade retardation has reached 25 to 30 percent by ages 9 to 11" (p. 152). As Professor Alexander found with his study in Baltimore, retention rates are much higher in urban school systems, with 50% or more of all students having been retained at least once. Statistics on retention rates are too inaccurate to do a close analysis of how changes in retention rates might affect international comparisons. Given that retention has not been shown to improve achievement either in controlled studies or in massive non-promotion programs tried in the 1980s (e.g., New York City's Gates Program and Chicago's stricter eighth-grade promotion standards), there is no reason to believe that increasing retention rates would increase the performance of U.S. students in international comparisons. Of course, cynically, we do have to consider that increasing retention could improve the ranking of U.S. students if more low achieving students will have dropped out of school by the time the tests are given. Data available from UNESCO show tremendous variability in the retention practices of other nations. In developing countries such as Brazil, the annual retention rate is 20 percent. Some children may spend three or four years in the first grade; 84 percent have dropped out by eighth grade. Among European nations, France has relatively high retention rates; only one-third of working-class children complete elementary school on time compared to an 84 percent rate for the children of professionals and executives. Some countries, such as Japan, Korea, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have "automatic" promotion policies for elementary education meaning that no students are retained; for Japan the automatic promotion policy applies to secondary education as well. Karl Alexander, Johns Hopkins, responds: The second part of your question, June, is easier to answer than the first– grade retention is not commonplace in other industrial countries, although it's not altogether clear how they manage to avoid it. One suggestion I’ve seen is that “looping” is more common in other countries– the practice of having the same teachers stay with children over several years. Time trends here in the U.S. are harder to assess, as no data on retention are compiled at the national level. The best you can do from national Census data is estimate the percentage of children who are older than the typical age for their grade level, but that’s very imprecise for gauging retention– birthdate cutoffs vary from place to place and across time, as do school starting dates, and then many children start school late (I’ve seen one estimate that 7% of first-graders nationally are academic “redshirts,” but I have no idea how accurate that figure is). And even these data, with all their inadequacies, only are available back to 1960. That means the picture has to be patched together from local sources, and Dr. Shepard has done as good a job as anyone of organizing that information. However, it might be of interest to you that a recent National Academy of Sciences report (“High Stakes,” by J. P. Heubert and R. M. Hauser) estimates that about a third of students nationally are overage for grade by age 17 - 18. David Larabee, in an article published in 1984 in the Harvard Education Review (a very well respected journal), reviews the history and ideology of promotion/retention practices here in the U.S. It’s good reading if you’re interested in an historical perspective on the issue.