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It seems to me that I am hearing some STRANGE things on this list. One
of them is that threatening students with retention is a good way to make
them perform . . . .
Am I the only one who is amazed by this train of thought?
What about looking inward, teachers? Could providing meaningful instruction
and assignments be more motivating than threatening failure? Could we perhaps
modify our instructional approaches to meet our students' needs?
Could we assess where our students are and what we need to provide to move
them to the next level of understanding as they move TOWARD a goal or standard?
Could we really attempt to educate ALL of our students - not just the ones
who fit the mold, cooperate, fill in all the blanks on our worksheets, and
give lip-service to our priorities?
Just wondering...... Diana
Increasing Expectations Can Lower Retention Rates
Like most of you I have read the "research" that claims that retention
does not benefit long range learning. I believe as professional educators
we must critically review any research study in terms of the site, the methods,
and even how the assertions and generalizations are formed.
I served three years as an elementary principal before moving to a middle
school to work as an associate principal for one year with a principal who
was retiring the next year. The number of low achieving students made my
head spin. Retention may not be the answer but social promotion is ONE of
the factors that is contributing to underachievement of a number of "high
maintenance" students.
We started an initiative that we dubbed "failure is not an option."
We told the students early in the year that we expected them to put forth
effort. Our efforts included a number of intervention strategies targeted
at getting low achieving students to get work done. As principal, I also
saw a need to increase the level of care for students in the building. I
believe that low achievers need to know that someone cares about them. Of
course, this was not easy! I did have a number of very honest discussions
with some staff who I felt could teach differently. I felt it was important
not to place "blame" on anyone but instead to look at all the
options we could use to increase student and staff responsibility.
Without a doubt, my assistant principal told some of our students early
in the year that if they did not put forth effort they would not be promoted
to the next grade level. Our social worker contacted parents weekly. I felt
it was critical to involve parents even if they felt we were "bugging"
them. In fact, when one parent told a community member that a social worker
was a "pest" I felt that perhaps our efforts were paying off!
We also initiated after school help sessions for students and optional study
tables where we took attendance. We told students that we would "do
whatever it takes" to help them achieve success in school. An assignment
book is required for every student in our school. It includes class passes
and students are required to carry the book with them at all times. The
use of the assignment book IS NOT OPTIONAL and it has helped our school
dramatically! As principal I personally call parents if a student is referred
to the office for not recording assignments.
I am happy to say that our failure rates have dropped considerably and the
number of students who have not met our standards have dropped from 75-100
at mid-year to around 10. We have told these students if they are passing
all their classes at the end of the school year they will be guaranteed
promotion to the next grade. Any failing grades will cause us to look carefully
at their promotion.
I believe we will retain 4 or five of these students who have simply refused
to do much work at all. WE WILL NOT RETAIN ANY STUDENT WHO IS MAKING AN
EFFORT TO PASS.
My point in posting this message is to emphasize my belief that to simply
quote the research is too simplistic and does not get at the heart of the
issue. As educational leaders we can realize what the economists call a
"costless gain" by simply increasing our expectations of students
and following through with intervention strategies to increase their performance.
Care is one of the missing components in some school improvement efforts.
We still have a lot of work to do but I believe our higher expectations
will make our efforts easier every year. Our responsibility is to teach
responsibility. To promote kids for doing nothing is harmful to the students
and our schools.
GRADE RETENTION: The Myths About "Staying Back"
Someone recently posted a message asking about the effectiveness of "retention."
Here is an article that I've posted on here before. It may help. -- Jerry
Taylor, Technology Integration Teacher, Greece (NY) School District.
-----------------------------
Retaining students at a certain grade level is often used as a means to
raise educational standards. The assumption is that by catching up on prerequisite
skills, students should be less at risk for failure when they go on to the
next grade. Strict enforcement of promotion standards at every grade is
expected both to ensure the competence of high school graduates and to lower
the dropout rate because learning deficiencies would never be allowed to
accumulate. Despite the popular belief that repeating a grade is an effective
remedy for students who have failed to master basic skills, however, the
large body of research on grade retention is almost uniformly negative!
MYTH: Fewer students repeat a grade these days than in the past. FACT: It
is estimated that approximately 2 children in every classroom of 30 are
retained in the U.S. annually. But this annual rate year after year produces
a cumulative rate of nonpromotion greater than 50 percent! Even allowing
for students who repeat more than one grade, it is estimated that by the
9th grade approximately HALF of all the students in the U.S. have flunked
at least one grade (or are no longer in school). This means that, contrary
to public perceptions, current grade failure rates are as high as they were
in the 19th century, before the days of "social promotion."
MYTH: Repeating a grade improves student achievement. FACT: Fifty-four recent
studies showed that, after some short-term gains, there were overall negative
effects from retention, including measures of academic achievement. This
means that retained children showed some improvement during the early part
of the repeat year, but eventually went on to the next grades and actually
ended up performing more POORLY on average than if they had gone on without
repeating.
MYTH: Non-promotion prevents student dropouts. FACT: There is a significant
relationship between grade retention and dropping out, however, it is in
the opposite direction from what most people might imagine. The truth is
that dropouts are 5 times more likely to have repeated a grade than high
school graduates. Students who repeat two grades have a probability of dropping
out that is near 100 percent! In the past these findings were largely ignored
because poor achievement could be the explanation for both grade retention
and for dropping out. Several large-scale studies have been done, however,
that corrected for these achievement differences. The studies found that
with equally poor achievement, students who repeated a year were still 20
to 30 percent more likely to drop out of school.
MYTH: There is no serious "stigma" associated with staying back.
FACT: One study showed that the prospect of repeating a grade was rated
as more stressful than "wetting in class" or "being caught
stealing." "Going blind" and "losing a parent"
were the only two life events that children said would be more stressful
than staying back in school. In another study, 87 percent of children interviewed
said that being retained made them feel "sad," "bad,"
"upset," or "embarrassed." Only 6 percent of retained
children gave positive answers about how retention made them feel, like
"you learn more," or "it lets you catch up." This supports
a widely shared perception that retention is a necessary punishment for
being bad in class or failing to learn.
If there's so much "bad news" associated with grade retention,
then, why do schools persist in keeping kids back? The reason is that teachers
and parents do not have the resources to conduct truly controlled experiments.
Without these controlled comparisons, retention LOOKS as if it works, especially
if you BELIEVE that it does! Consider how the performance of individual
retained and control children is usually interpreted by teachers. A control
child does very poorly academically, is considered for retention, but is
"socially promoted." Next year, this child usually ends up in
the bottom half of the class, still struggling. The teachers say, "If
only we had retained him, his performance would have improved." Meanwhile,
a comparable child DOES repeat, shows some improvement on some skills during
the repeat year, but in the next grades ends up doing even more poorly than
the control child. Believing that retention helps, however, and without
being able to see the controlled comparison, teachers accept any improvement
during the repeat year itself as proof that retention works; and about performance
in the next grade they say "He would have performed even more poorly
without that extra year. At least we tried!"
OK, so retention doesn't work... but what alternatives are available? There
are actually several ways to provide extra instructional help that focuses
on a student's specific learning needs within the context of normal grade
promotion. Remedial help, before- and after-school programs, "Saturday
school," summer school, instructional aides to work with targeted children
in the regular classroom, and no-cost peer tutoring are all more effective
than retention. Unlike retention, each of these actually HAS a research
base showing positive achievement gains for participating children.
Addendum: Here are some comments I've received:
>From an educator in Indiana:
"I became principal of a school with 750 8th graders and 39 students
had been retained from the year before (some for the 2nd time) At the end
of the year, not ONE of the 39 did better than the year before. Instead,
they were the most disruptive, negative role models in the school and them
being there did nothing to encourage others to 'try'. I feel there is absolutely
no value to the students or the school as a whole. Most kids who are 'scared'
of retention are those that would have passed any way. And the environment
of fear/threats is not appropriate at all in the middle level (or any other
level)."
>From BCarozza@aol.com:
I differ with Lee's opinion on retention. I have seen it work wonders with
many children. As a Principal, I have seen students who are socially or
emotionally immature truly benefit from a year of catch up. As a father,
my own son is repeating third grade and we have seen a dramatic turn around
with his self-esteem and confidence. I think the best philosophy is to look
at each child individually and do what's best for each.
-------------------------
This posting is paraphrased from an article in a Reader's Digest a year
or so ago. The article was based on information from Educational
Leadership magazine.
Here's another source provided by a reader:
"The Resistance of Conventional Wisdom to Research Evidence: The Case
of Retention in Grade" (pages 215-220), Phi
Delta Kappan, November 1989
-------------------------
From: Ron Banks <r-banks1@UIUC.EDU>
Subject: Retention Citations from ERIC
To: Multiple recipients of list MIDDLE-L
Grade retention literature has been a topic of discussion recently.... There
are several sites to search ERIC on the Internet, including the AskERIC
Virtual Library site. "Grade Repetition" is the formal subject
descriptor.
Ron Banks, ERIC/EECE
Don't Expect Kids to Change Unless We Change
This thread on retention has been very interesting, but I think we need
to recognize two different groups of students:
-- the students who can, but just don't do (Does this group actually exist?)
-- the students who try, but for whatever reason just aren't passing.
What the research basically says is that when you are dealing with those
students who are struggling, retention ALONE has been unsuccessful. Primarily
because <unfortunately> what happens is that kids are expected to
pass just by spending one more year doing the same old thing (that didn't
work in the first place) again. In other words, we are expecting the kids
to change without changing what we are doing. That's why it doesn't work.
With the group of students who refuse to try--then yes retention as a punishment
may work. Then again, it may not. It may just serve to get the kid out of
the system sooner.
However, what bothers me is that it seems that there are always those who
blame students for not learning material without willing to concede that
different students need different learning experiences in order to learn.
I agree that a student who has all F's should not be socially promoted,
but at the same time I would want to know what will happen to ensure that
the child doesn't fail again. Has the child been tested? Is there proof
that the child can in fact "do" the work? We all know kids who
are very "street-wise" and have excellent verbal skills that really
"can't do" some of the academics. (It's ironic that so many people
are willing to assume that kids want to fail. I've never met anyone who
decided that failure was their goal. However, the "don't care attitude
" does become a great defense mechanism after years of failing) What
changes will be put in place within the educational program to meet the
needs of the child? What about matching teaching styles and learning styles?
We all know of situations where having the "right" teacher makes
a huge difference. Yet typical scheduling doesn't take anything about individual
students or teachers into effect.
I think the bottom line is that we need to look at each student and situation
individually.
If You Want to Reduce Retention, Make the Curriculum Relevant
In response to my challenge to attempt to meet the needs of students without
threat of retention, someone said:
"I agree with all you say - please share some documented examples of
how you do this in your classroom (how many kids, grade level, number of
inclusion students, etc.) and how you evaluate your success. I would appreciate
it!"
I'm not sure that I can help you with specifics here. I have previously
taught middle school. I have also foster-parented adolescent children, and
my own kids are now 11 and 15, so I face middle school issues daily.
However, I am currently teaching first grade. I have an inclusive classroom
of 24 - 11 with IEP's. Believe me, I practice what I preach. The only support
I have is 1 hour per day, 4 days per week with the speech and language therapist
co-teaching in my classroom. I have a TMH student, two apraxic students,
2 speech kids (articulation only), and 6 language impaired (3 with severe
auditory processing disorders). Most of the language impaired children are
also LD, and 2 get 30 minutes daily of resource room pull-out. This just
started 2 weeks ago when testing was completed and learning disabilities
verified. I also have 13 kids without diagnosed needs. We are a title one
school, and many of my students are from impoverished backgrounds. Several
of their parents are illiterate.
I use reading centers, writing workshop and inquiry projects. All of my
students (except for the TMH child) have learned to read this year.
As for what I would do on the middle school level: The most important thing
would be to allow students to make choices. I would use cooperative learning
strategies -- especially jigsaw. I would have the kids research information
and help to teach the class. If I was teaching English, I would make connections
between literature and writing process. I would have daily writing workshops.
I would allow students to choose many of their own books and writing topics.
I would look for ways to tie my academic content to their prior knowledge
and their real lives.
I know this is not as specific as you would like, but the whole issue is
too complex to cover adequately in this forum.
I would love to hear what other teachers are doing to make their curriculum
relevant to their students.
. . . Diana
Education Is About Asking Relevant and Rigorous Questions
Diana, I would personally like to *thank-you* for raising these questions!!
I am not sure *anyone* has the answers documented in neat, orderly, rational
fashion, as some on this list are seeking. Personally, I welcome the opportunity
to explore and discuss these questions that seem to give such needed pause
for all educators to *think deeply* about what the heck we are doing each
and every day in a world that has significantly evolved during my years
of living thus far.
In fact, I believe that many things shared on Middle-l every day offer tiny
insights into the nature and successes of our craft. Does anyone have the
cookbook for successful teaching activities that includes recipes for creating
rigorous and relevant curriculum that is, of course standards-based, that
is authentically assessed, that reaches all corners of heterogeneously grouped
classrooms, that provides for classroom management techniques, that invites
increased parental involvement, that is relevant to kid's lives, that is
constantly evaluated to keep pace with our rapidly evolving world, and that
ignites each and every student to do their level best?
Each posting is a morsel that I slowly digest into the framework of what
it means to be a teacher in my school, with my kids, in April of 1997. Each
day seems to pose new challenges that refuse to fit the model of teaching
created just yesterday. So thanks, Diana, for reminding us that education,
ultimately, is about asking rigorous and relevant questions. I am reminded
of Kahlil Gibran's thought that "the significance of a man is not in
what he attains but rather in what he longs to attain."
What do we long to attain as educators?
We Can Only Change Ourselves
What a great discussion! My answer to "Why should teachers be the ones
to change?" is simply that we are the only ones we CAN change! I can't
go into my students homes and fix their parents or their lifestyles. I can't
go into my student's heads and "fix" their attitudes or their
abilities. If I decide that's what has to change, I become powerless to
help. However, I can look at what I'm doing, assess whether it's working
or not, and if it isn't, I can change it. PS Diane, I REALLY wish my own
children could be in your class!!:-)
A Cover Story about Retention
The discussion about retention has been very interesting. The cover story
of the spring 1997 issue of Middle Ground (National
Middle School Association) focuses on this topic in more detail and
includes resources and reports for further study. Please send me a message
directly if you would like a copy.
Holly Holland
Editor
##
Be sure to see the essay on retention
here on MiddleWeb:
"Everybody Has to Get It."
A NEW ROUND OF DISCUSSION TOOK PLACE ON THE Middle-L LISTSERVE IN
LATE SUMMER, 1998:
Lower SES kids more likely to be retained
I have been doing reading in this area, and I have come to the conclusion
that simple social promotion is as wrong as simple retention. The only
difference is that social promotion makes the adults feel better.
Retaining a child, with no specific plan to address the child's specific
school skill deficits (if that is indeed the reason the child performed
poorly) is, in my opinion, no different than sending a child on, with the
same skill deficits, and again specific plan to address them.
Sadly, some research shows that among kids who perform poorly in a given
grade, low SES, minority, urban, low IQ kids are more likely to be retained
than high SES, white, suburban, high IQ kids. Additionally, one study in
Illinois showed that children who were later identified learning disabled
were, in over half the cases, retained in an earlier grade.
If we don't spend the money to develop and carry out specific plans for
these kids, whether retained or socially promoted, research shows their
future is grim.
Tom Guttormsson
Marshall, Mn. Junior High
tbgbp@starpoint.net