Grade retention

History

Different schools have used different approaches throughout history. Grade retention or repetition was essentially meaningless in the one-room schoolhouses of more than a century ago, because access to outside standards were very limited, and the small scale of the school, with perhaps only a few students of each age, was conducive to individualized instruction. With the proliferation of larger, graded schools in the middle of the 19th century, retention became a common practice. In fact, a century ago, approximately half of all American students were retained at least once before the age of 13.

Social promotion began to spread in the 1930s with concerns about the psychosocial effects of retention. Social promotion is the promoting of underperforming students under the ideological principle that staying with their same-age peers is important to success. This trend reversed in the 1980s, as concern about slipping academic standards rose.The practice of grade retention in the U.S. has been climbing steadily since the 1980s. The practice of making retention decisions on the basis of the results of a single test—called high-stakes testing—is widely condemned by professional educators. Test authors generally advise that their tests are not adequate for high-stakes decisions, and that decisions should be made based on all the facts and circumstances.

Research

There is conclusive evidence that grade retention is significantly helpful, and much of the existing research has been methodologically invalid. Three different kinds of studies exist or have been proposed, and each has its inherent pitfalls:

1. Studies that compare students who were retained against students who were considered for retention but were eventually promoted: Although these studies conclude that social promotion is beneficial, they are methodologically unsound due to selection bias in the group-allocation phase, in which the students selected for promotion were better (or less weak) and were indeed selected for promotion because the schools believed them to be stronger or more personally mature students whereas the students selected for promotion were weaker and selected because they were weaker.
2. Studies which compare retained students to their own prior performance. These studies favor grade retention. However, these studies are biased because they do not adequately control for personal growth or changes in environmental factors (such as poverty).
3. Studies which randomly assign a large pool of borderline students to promotion or retention. This style of research is methodologically sound and, if performed on a sufficiently large scale and with sufficiently detailed information collected, would provide valuable or even definitive information. However, schools and parents are unwilling to have a child's future affected by a random assignment, and so both due to institutional opposition and for ethical reasons these studies are simply not done.

Non-academic outcomes: Retention is associated with poor "social adjustment, attitudes toward school, behavioral outcomes, and attendance." Retention is a "stronger predictor of delinquency than socioeconomic status, race, or ethnicity," and is also a strong predictor of drug and alcohol use and teenage pregnancy. (Study style #1 favors social promotion.)

Australia and New Zealand

Australia uses grade retention, although in 2010, the New South Wales Department of Education and Training made a new policy of no student repeating at any school for various reasons. For example, as of 2010, students are not repeating Year 11 or Year 12 because of all the post-school services after they complete Year 12 such as TAFEs or universities.

In New Zealand, secondary schools commonly use a system of internal academic streaming in which children of the same age are subdivided on the basis of ability, and lower achieving students (those who would be retained under the North American system) are taught in different classes, and at a different rate, from higher achieving students, but are kept within their own age group. This system has largely rendered grade retention unnecessary in all but the most exceptional circumstances.

In most cases where streaming alone is insufficient, additional special needs provision is usually seen as being preferable to grade retention, particularly when behavioral difficulties are involved.

Asia

Japan and Korea do not allow grade retention. North Korea does not have school retention. Malaysia also does not practice grade retention.

Singapore practices grade retention in Secondary Schools if a student is unsuccessful in achieving a satisfactory accumulated percentage grade. The school authorities may also decide that it would be more appropriate for the student to advance to a higher level in a lower stream such as in the cases of Express and Normal (Academic) students. Grade retention is most common in Junior Colleges where a promotional criteria is set in place. Hong Kong practices grade retention in elementary and secondary school if the student obtains a failing grade even after taking a re-test, though grade retention is very rare.

Europe

Norway, Denmark and Sweden do not allow grade retention.

In the United Kingdom, a similar streaming system to New Zealand's is used (see above).

Germany, Italy, Austria, Netherlands, France, Finland and Switzerland use grade retention.

Greece allows grade retention if a student fails more than 5 final exams, or 5 or less both in May examinations and in September examination. A student who has missed more than 114 periods of class can also repeat a grade.

North America

The United States and Canada both use grade retention.

In the U.S., six-year-old students are most likely to be retained, with another spike around the age of 12. In particular, some large schools have a transitional classroom, sometimes called "Kindergarten 2", for six-year-olds who are not reading-ready.

School officials in some US states have the authority to allow students to be held back if they do not attend summer school.

Common arguments

The following are common arguments regarding this practice.

Arguments against grade retention

Opponents of "no social promotion" policies do not defend social promotion so much as say that retention is even worse. They argue that retention is not a cost-effective response to poor performance when compared to cheaper or more effective interventions, such as additional tutoring and summer school. They point to a wide range of research findings that show no advantage to, or even harm from, retention, and the tendency for gains from retention to wash out.

Harm from retention cited by these critics include:

Critics of retention also note that retention is expensive for school systems: requiring a student to repeat a grade is essentially to add one student for a year to the school system, assuming that the student does not drop out.

The possibility of grade retention has been shown to be a significant source of stress for students. In one study of childhood fears performed in the 1980s, the top three fears for US sixth graders were a parent's death, going blind, and being retained. After two decades of increasing retention practices, a repeat of the study in 2001 found that grade retention was the single greatest fear, higher than loss of a parent or going blind. This change likely reflects the students' correct perception that they were statistically far more likely to repeat the sixth grade than to suffer the death of a parent or the loss of their vision.

Arguments for grade retention

Opponents of social promotion argue that passing a child who did not learn the necessary material cheats the child of an education. As a result, when the child gets older, the student will likely fail classes or be forced to attend summer school. Opponents of social promotion argue that some children would benefit from an additional year, especially in Kindergarten, to mature and develop social and emotional skills. This additional time will assist students with improved academic performance. Opponents of social promotion argue that it has the following negative impacts: