A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Introduction

Working to give students the opportunity to reach high standards of learning demands that educators and state and local leaders take responsibility for ending the practice of social promotion--where students are allowed to continue to pass through school with their peers without satisfying academic requirements or meeting performance indicators at key grades.

Research indicates, and common sense confirms, that passing students on to the next grade when they are unprepared neither increases student achievement nor properly prepares students for college and future employment.⁽¹⁾ At the same time, research also shows that holding students back to repeat a grade (retention) without changing instructional strategies is ineffective. Much evidence suggests that the achievement of retained students still lags behind that of their peers after repeating a grade, making it an ineffective strategy for enabling students to catch up.⁽²⁾ Retention in grade also greatly increases the likelihood that a student will drop out of school--and being held back twice makes dropping out a virtual certainty.

Students who are promoted without regard to their achievement or are retained often fall even further behind their classmates, and those who do not drop out usually finish school without the knowledge and skills expected of a high school graduate. Both being promoted without regard to effort or achievement or retained without extra assistance sends a message to students that little is expected from them, that they have little worth, and that they do not warrant the time and effort it would take to help them be successful in school.

Although it sounds appealing to suggest that all students must receive an equal and challenging education, many school leaders struggle with the question of what to do about students who do not make the grade and are unable to meet the requirements set for them. Some question whether all students are really capable of meeting high standards. Others are concerned that holding all students accountable for achievement is unfair when the system does not give all students equal access to a high-quality educational experience. There are ongoing challenges about the use of assessments to make important educational decisions.

With pressure increasing to hold students accountable for performance and to end social promotion, and research pointing to negative findings related to retention, educators often feel they have few choices. Many are reluctant to end the practice of social promotion because they believe that the only alternative for students who do not meet performance standards is to repeat a grade.

This guide holds that the issue of ending social promotion has too often been posed as a debate over the relative benefits and disadvantages of promotion versus retention. The results of both policies are unacceptably high dropout rates, especially for poor and minority students, and inadequate knowledge and skills for students. Neither practice closes the learning gap for low-achieving students, and neither practice is an appropriate response to the academic needs of students experiencing difficulty mastering required coursework.

If we are going to expect more from our students, then our leaders, administrators, teachers, parents, and community members need to expect more of themselves. Taking responsibility for ending social promotion requires tough decisions and strong actions by states, districts, and schools. It means requiring students to meet performance standards in key subject areas, at key transition points, in order to advance to the next grade level. It involves setting clear expectations for students and explicit policies for promotion, and adopting measures to hold all stakeholders accountable for student performance.

To truly embrace the idea that all children can learn to high standards requires that every student has the chance to learn the content and the best possible opportunity to achieve to high standards. It requires a comprehensive approach to ending social promotion that begins early with opportunities for preschool and early childhood learning; strengthens teaching by providing high-quality curriculum, instruction, and teacher preparation; identifies students who need extra help early and accommodates students with special needs; and provides additional learning time. It also means intervening to help students who, despite these efforts, still need help to meet challenging standards. Systemwide, taking responsibility for ending social promotion means holding schools publicly accountable for delivering the kind of education students need to reach standards, rewarding schools when they do deliver, and helping low-performing schools improve. Throughout, parents need to remain actively involved in their children's education at home and at school.

What is social promotion?

Social promotion is generally understood to be the practice of allowing students who have failed to meet performance standards and academic requirements to pass on to the next grade with their peers instead of completing or satisfying the requirements. Promoting students in this way is called social promotion because it is often carried out in the presumed interest of a student's social and psychological well-being, without regard to achievement.

Retention, sometimes viewed as the only alternative to social promotion, is a policy that holds back students who have failing grades at the end of a school year. Retention is most often a policy of repetition--students are given an additional year to repeat a grade to go over the same academic content, often taught the same way, that they failed to master the previous year.

How widespread is social promotion?

While social promotion and retention are salient educational issues, it is difficult to estimate the prevalence of the practices. Some states do not collect retention information at all and many others collect only limited data.

Is there another alternative? Can't you intervene before retention, and can't you extend time periods so that you spend more time with these children? Does retention have to be your only option? —Houston teacher

Retention rates vary widely and it is difficult to interpret and compare the data.⁽³⁾ Social promotion remains a hidden problem. Few are willing to admit the extent to which social promotion takes place, much less keep track of it.

Still, a variety of indicators suggest that social promotion is a serious problem facing our public education system.

• A majority of the teachers surveyed in a recent poll indicated that they had promoted unprepared students in the past year.⁽⁴⁾

• Research indicates that from 10 to 15 percent of young adults who graduate from high school and have not gone further--up to 340,000 high school graduates each year--cannot balance a checkbook or write a letter to a credit card company to explain an error on a bill.⁽⁵⁾

• If one looks at national assessments of student performance, upwards of a third of students score below the basic level of proficiency. For example, mathematics results from the 1996 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) for students in grades 4, 8, and 12 show that between 32 to 40 percent of public school students in the nation failed to meet the "basic" standard. At the same time, analysis of the 1996 Current Population Statistics indicates that only about 3 percent of students are two or more years over age for their grade (an indication that they have been retained at least once).⁽⁶⁾

• The California State University system, for example, reported that in 1998, 54 percent of its incoming freshmen failed to pass an entry level math placement test. Forty-seven percent failed an English placement test.⁽⁷⁾

Research also indicates that retention is a serious problem in our schools. The 3 percent figure cited above is a very conservative estimate. A recent study tracing a cohort of children from 1987 to 1996 (and based on the percentage of students who are one, rather than two, years over age for their grade) estimated that 21 percent of students were enrolled below grade level at ages 6 to 8. By the time the students were 12 to 14 years old, 31 percent were below grade level for their age.⁽⁸⁾ Data from the Child Health Survey and National Household Education Survey suggest that by first grade 7 to 10 percent of students have been retained.⁽⁹⁾

Of particular concern is the fact that across all of these measures grade retention varies substantially by family income and parent education. Using more conservative estimates (based only on students who are two or more years over age for their grade), in low-income families and families in which the parents have less than a high school education, almost 7 percent of students are at least two years older than their classmates, whereas in higher-income families less than 2 percent of students are two or more years over age. Retention also is more likely among boys than among girls, and more than twice as prevalent among African American students as among white students. Across all age groups, 2.6 percent of white students, 3.8 percent of Hispanic students, and 5.5 percent of African American students are two or more years over the expected age for their grade. ⁽¹⁰⁾

The impact of social promotion is evident from survey research on confidence in the credentials of today's high school graduates. According to Public Agenda, 63 percent of employers, 32 percent of parents, and 26 percent of teachers do not believe a high school diploma is a guarantee that students have mastered the basics.⁽¹¹⁾

As mentioned above, survey research also indicates that teachers are socially promoting students. Although most teachers agree that promoting students who are unprepared creates a burden for teachers and classmates, lowers standards, and impedes the education of all students, in a recent poll, more than half reported that they had promoted unprepared students in the past year. The reasons teachers gave for passing students along even when they are unprepared included the following:

• Teachers feel under pressure to promote students. Out of fear that high failure rates reflect poorly on schools and administrators, teachers sometimes yield to pressure from principals and parents to promote unprepared students. Sixty percent of teachers surveyed report pressure from principals and other administrators to promote students, and 52 percent report parental pressure to promote students. As one Houston teacher explained in a recent focus group on ending social promotion, "Administrators just basically come down and tell the teachers, 'Look, we can't have a high failure rate because it makes me look bad. And if I look bad, you look bad.'"⁽¹²⁾

• Teachers know that educational research indicates that retention can be ineffective, if not harmful, but many feel that there are insufficient educational alternatives to social promotion or retention for students who do not master the grade-level material.⁽¹³⁾

Concern about social promotion is becoming more evident in the policy priorities of public officials as well. According to the American Federation of Teachers, 10 states have established statewide policies for ending social promotion.⁽¹⁴⁾

Let's ensure that students are learning the basics, and let's guarantee that a high school diploma means what it ought to mean...We must stop promoting students who haven't learned and we must stop graduating students who aren't ready...What is right is to identify the students who need help, figure out what they need and focus on giving them the help they need. —Governor James Hunt, North Carolina

In their 1999 State of the State addresses, numerous governors called for an end to social promotion in their schools. States such as California, Delaware, South Carolina, and Wisconsin recently passed laws to curtail social promotion by tying promotion policies to state content and student performance standards.

What are the costs to students and society?

Decades of research indicate that both retention and social promotion, if not accompanied by effective programmatic intervention, fail to provide long-term benefits for low-performing students. The practices of retention and social promotion were being questioned in the research literature as early as the 1940s, and hundreds of independent studies and research reviews since then have added to the body of negative findings. This research indicates that neither practice, as typically implemented, improves failing students' chances for educational success.

The costs of social promotion to students are high. To move students from grade to grade without attention to their skills is an unacceptable practice. It frustrates students who cannot do the work expected, and it sends a message to students that little is expected of them. As a result, students fail to grasp the importance of working to achieve academic goals and learn they can get by without working hard.⁽¹⁵⁾ Students who are socially promoted are likely to graduate, if they graduate at all, unprepared for work and for the future.

But research shows that retention also has serious negative effects on students. Students retained and retaught the same material using the same instructional practices usually do not catch up to their peers. The National Association of School Psychologists has reported that retained children tend to have low self-esteem, get into trouble, and dislike school. Retention can be a particularly traumatic experience for children who view it as punishment and a highly stressful event.⁽¹⁶⁾ As with students who are socially promoted, often students who repeat a grade are treated as "lost causes." Teachers assume that the retained students have limited potential and thus have low expectations of them.

The costs of failing to help students meet academic expectations extend beyond individual students to society as a whole. Social promotion has been pointed to as one of the main reasons why many colleges and businesses must spend time and money giving high school graduates remedial training in such basics as reading. A recent study by the Brookings Institution estimates that the total cost of providing remedial instruction to incoming freshmen nationwide is about $1 billion. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, about one in three incoming college freshmen in 1996 had to take a remedial class in math, reading, or writing.

Policies to end social promotion must be accompanied by a recognition that it will take much effort and many resources to help those students who do not meet standards; Boston's efforts to end social promotion are expected to cost $5 million annually.⁽¹⁷⁾ Chicago anticipates that it will cost $63 million to provide summer school assistance to over 80,000 students in 1999.

But failure to take responsibility for the education of all children in our society, including failure to provide opportunity to underachieving students, holds potentially even greater costs to society. Low self-esteem, lack of education, and school failure are highly associated with poverty, crime, and violence among youth and young adults.

The policy options available to educators and state and local leaders are not simply social promotion or retention. The following sections of this guide offer better options for educators and state and local leaders, including a variety of promising strategies to prevent academic failure and intervene when students need extra assistance to meet high standards.

The first section describes how states, districts, and schools can set a policy context for academic success by taking responsibility for setting explicit promotion policies and raising standards. It also highlights the importance of concentrating on providing high-quality curriculum and instruction to all students, as well as the importance of including families and community stakeholders among those who must take responsibility for helping students meet expectations.

The next section emphasizes that schools must start early to prevent academic failure by offering preschool and early literacy opportunities. The guide then turns to strategies for strengthening learning opportunities in the classroom by identifying and intervening early for at-risk students, ensuring that there is a well-prepared teacher in every classroom, using research-based practices, reducing class size, and accommodating students with special needs.

The guide also examines strategies--such as summer school, after-school programs, and year round schooling--for extending learning time to help students who, despite prevention and early intervention efforts, still need alternatives that help them develop the skills they need to achieve.

If you are just going to pass students on to the next grade, you are dooming them to failure. —a Philadelphia teacher

Finally, the guide addresses the issue of school accountability. Ending social promotion demands leadership, and a sense of collective responsibility that can only develop when expectations and consequences are clearly communicated within schools and with parents and the community. The guide concludes with an inventory of federal resources available to help states, districts, and schools end social promotion.

17. Daley, 1998.
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[Presidential Directive]

[Taking Responsibility]