Introduction

As school starts this fall parents, teachers and school administrators from New York and Boston to San Francisco, from St. Louis and Chicago to Dallas are crying out regarding the new emphasis on tests and the new penalties for underperforming students. Among the remedies proposed for the ailing education system are the use of standardized tests and the ending of social promotion. Social promotion, the automatic advancing of failing students, is based on the belief that holding them back would affect their social relationships and lower their self-esteem as well as their academic progress.

The new no-nonsense mood is being translated into law in various parts of the country. Last spring, Missouri State Senator Steve Ehlmann inserted an amendment into a bill which served to stop social promotion. The amendment stated that no public school student who could not read on a level with students in the grade below could pass on to the next grade. Two new California laws require school districts to adopt new promotion policies for students in grades 3, 4, and 5 as well as in the middle and high schools. In New York last year two new statewide tests for 4th and 8th graders were administered with little advance notice.

Clearly political pressure is now growing to hold back students who don't make the grade. The fallout from the current controversy is taking its toll on students and their parents as well as on school administrators and teachers. Are students caught in the middle of the debate and bearing the brunt of the failings of the educational system?

Josh, 14 : We had to hurry up and cram in a lot of facts our social studies teacher thought might be on the test. I memorized them for the test and then I forgot all about them.

Mr. K., high school math teacher : I ditched my lesson plans for three weeks before the exam; I had to focus on what I thought would be emphasized on the statewides. My principal was worried that we might not do as well as other schools in our district.

Mrs. L., parent of an 8-year-old : I'm worried that schools are just going to drill and drill the basics and they won't emphasize teaching kids how to actually think about problems and solve them.

The controversy has been around for some time. Let's look at some facts.

What are the advantages of retention rather than social promotion?

The social promotion policy gave rise to questions regarding academic and community expectations and student work ethics. Was academic rigor being gradually replaced in American classrooms with a watered-down curriculum? Over time, many school systems, feeling that the policy destroyed confidence in public schools and in the diplomas conferred on the students, adopted a harder line. Many major cities now have some policy and a timetable in place for ending social promotion, according to Michael Casserly of the Council of Great City Schools, a Washington-based organization that represents urban districts. Such change has received recognition from our nation's political and educational leaders. President Clinton, in his l997 State of the Union address, encouraged the wide-scale retention or non-promotion of students who earn low scores on standardized tests, when he urged reliance on test scores as a means to "help us end social promotion...for no child should move from grade school to junior high or junior high to high school until he or she is ready." U. S. Education Secretary Richard W. Riley, recognizing the complexity of the problem, said recently that "holding schools publicly accountable and providing help where it is needed are critical to success."

Does retention help low-achieving students?

Despite these pronouncements, there is no evidence that retention per se is effective. Scores of studies in the l970s demonstrate that retention does not have positive effects for most failing students. When students who fail in one presentation of curriculum are expected to repeat the same curriculum presentation again they often fail again, and statistics indicate that students who have been retained one or more times are twice as likely to drop out of school by the time they are l6. Similarly, students who are retained in secondary school are four times more likely than their same-age peers to drop out.

According to Linda Darling-Hammond of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, writing in the Educational Digest, November, l998, students who are held back do not do as well academically in the long run compared to similar students who are promoted. She points out that "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." The result is that "Children give up on themselves as learners. Even small children perceive that being held back is a stigma."

How should districts decide who passes and who fails?

Should they use a test, and if so, which one? Should they measure grade level in months, as many reading tests do, or in years, which would allow more students to pass? Robert Hauser, a University of Wisconsin sociology professor, speaking on high-stakes testing and social promotion before the U. S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, stated that limits on social promotion policies are fine, as long as students are not blindsided at the end of the school year. He stated further that schools need to catch students before they fall too far behind, and a child's fate should not rest on one test. "All of the kinds of policies that seem to get created around the country where students pass or fail on the administration of one single test are simply ethically wrong." Standardized tests are group-administered, usually rely on a multiple-choice format and offer little information to educators about the learning process or the child's skills and ability to analyze or synthesize material.

What are the alternatives if neither retention nor social promotion are effective?

Some creative educators are developing multifaceted assessments that engage students in performance tasks that reflect standards in a given field and use systematic teacher observation as well. These assessments yield detailed information about a student's approach to learning, his or her needs and levels of performance, rather than a judgment as to whether they will be held back or passed on. "Access to high-quality curriculum and teaching is strongly related to achievement, and teacher expertise is by far the single most important determinant of student performance," states Darling-Hammond, adding that schools need to employ strategies such as skillful teaching, redesigning schools, targeted services and useful assessments.

The most reliable studies on student achievement link academic performance to:

• The amount of specific time children spend daily for instruction, practice, review and reinforcement of newly acquired skills
• Inspired, highly skilled teachers, who are knowledgeable about methods of instruction and strategies for learning, informed about curriculum, and responsive and supportive to varying learning styles
• Smaller class size

The current controversy is raising some critical questions about education - appropriate curriculum, standards, assessment, criteria for promotion, respect for individuals - that need to be addressed. There are no easy answers, but the guiding principle of all solutions must build on the premise that it is the primary responsibility of schools to educate our children, to enable them to build a solid foundation and to develop the tools to navigate through an increasingly competitive world.

References and Related Books

Casserly, M. 1999
Urban Public Schools on the Comeback, The Education Digest . Prakken Publications: Ann Arbor, (64:6, pp. 11-14).

Darling-Hammond, L. 1998
Avoiding Both Grade Retention and Social Promotion, The Education Digest . Prakken Publications: Ann Arbor (64:3, pp. 48-53).

Hauser, R. 1999
What If We Ended Social Promotion? Education Week , Washington, DC: (18:30).

Boston Globe , Boston, MA, September 6, 1999
Classrooms Are Losing Their Academic Vigor (p. 6).

St. Louis Dispatch , St. Louis Missouri, September 10, 1999
End Social Promotion Now (p. C18).