To Retain or Not To Retain?

I've been a public school teacher for over 5 years now...wow. In that time, I have NEVER had to retain a kid from passing to the next grade. We call it lots of things: retention, failing, holding back, not passing, keep back, etc. It is a much more complicated issue than you might think.

Kid goes to school. Kid doesn't learn. For whatever reason (not cognitively ready, parents don't help enough, too many absences, wrong teacher, etc.) kid doesn't show enough progress for the teacher to be concerned about how he will do in the next grade level. The political climate says that teachers just pass kids along...even those who can't read. We don't care...we just pass them along. I wish it was that simple.

Research shows that retention, failing, keeping kids back, whatever you want to call it, DOESN'T WORK. Study after study proves that kids who were retained almost never catch up to their peers, are at a disadvantage socially, have low self-esteem, the list goes on. Here is a quick look at some of the insights into student retention:

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.
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.

Whether you agree with that or not, that's the climate now. Retention doesn't work. So what to do?

I have conferences tonight and tomorrow and for the first time in 5 years, I had to have the "talk" with a parent about the very real possibility that her daughter was NOT ready for 3rd grade and I was seriously considering holding her back. She seemed shocked...had she not been seeing the constant stream of "F's" coming home on EVERYTHING her daughter did? Did she not read the progress report which had "F's" in EVERY subject and a big note on the bottom to contact me asap? Did she not just listen to her daughter struggle to read her own writing because "knife" was spelled "nuffu?" Did she not think that moving 4 times this year and putting her kid in 4 different schools would make a difference?

I don't believe in holding kids back if they are trying and showing growth. However, if they've missed basic instruction and can't spell "yawn" (she spelled it "goungun") and have no knowledge of basic spelling, phonics, math, reading and writing rules, HOW can I pass them???

Just so you general public people know the hoops I have to jump through in order to keep this kid in 2nd grade one more year so she can HOPEFULLY stay in one school long enough to learn to read, write and do math, I've been copying all her work for the last month. I have documented the interventions I've tried with her...what I've tried, the length of time I've tried them, and their result. I've tested her every week on her reading skills and I sit with her every week during my plan time to help her understand the math we are doing. She's hopelessly lost. She can't even add 10 plus any number without help...next week we start 3-digit addition: how the heck is she going to be able to do that??? I've had my old mentor teacher come in once a week on her plan time to work with her one-on-one for 45 minutes on phonics and 1st grade reading skills.

You would think this would be enough, right? Nope. On April 30, I have a meeting scheduled with the principal, vice principal, child psychologist, intervention specialist, literacy coach and district curriculum manager so we can look at my data and "discuss" retention or other interventions that I "haven't tried yet." Then "as a team" we make the decision on whether or not to retain. I've never been at one of these meetings before, so I'm actually a bit nervous.

So there you go. The next time you cry out at a bar or at a party that "teachers pass everyone these days..." think about me and the hoops I have to jump through in order to retain ONE kid in 5 years who desperately needs it. Keep your fingers crossed that this poor girl doesn't end up in 3rd grade next year expected to read biographies and writing multi-paragraph essays. She'd never make it.