Learner-Centered Alternatives to Social Promotion and Retention

Learner-Centered Alternatives to Social Promotion and Retention: A Talent Development Approach* A serious problem in American schools that they typically seek strategies for helping students after they have encountered difficulty have experienced failure instead of focusing on reducing failure before it emerges. The most popular remedies for dealing with struggling students have been to retain them in the same grade to socially promote them to the next grade. This article discusses the bipolar notion of social promotion versus retention, arguing that neither represents an appropriate solution for enhancing the learning outcomes of low-performing students and closing the achievement gaps among students of various ethnic groups. A learner-centered approach offered as a viable alternative to the either retention or social promotion decision and as a mechanism for building upon the skills and assets that students bring to the classroom. This approach helps us to focus on what matters most-the learner. Since the evolvement of the graded school in the mid-19th century, there has been debate regarding how best to determine if students should be advanced onto the next grade. The major points of contention have centered around whether promotion should be based solely on students' academic performance and merit whether social and emotional factors should also be taken into account. In recent years, there has been much attention given to the controversial practice of social promotion simply passing students to the next grade with their peers even though they are not academically prepared able to do the required work. Results of an American Federation of Teachers' (1997) survey of a sample of the country's largest school districts revealed that social promotion, while not explicitly endorsed, is rampant across this country. With the national call for higher standards and accountability and, ostensibly, zero-tolerance for poor performance in our nation's schools, social promotion practices have received heated criticism from various individuals and groups including parents, teachers, administrators, teachers' unions, policymakers, and elected officials. Over the last several years, President Bill has raised national consciousness and reopened debate on addressing the problems of low-performing students. In his January 19, 1999 State of the Union Address, he challenged states and school districts to eliminate social promotion stating that do our children no favors when we allow them to pass from grade to grade without mastering the material (Clinton Speech, 1999). President urged that students be required to meet rigorous academic standards at key transition points in their schooling, earning grade promotion through effort and achievement and not simply by accumulating time in school. He also vowed to require all schools accepting federal funds to end social promotion as part of a slate of new accountability measures. In response to these and other recent commentaries, a number of states and cities have mandated efforts to reinstate retention, to require strict achievementrelated promotion policies and to end the practice of social promotion (Education Commission of States, 1999; Clinton Speech, 1999). Grade retention has been typically viewed as the alternative to passing ill-prepared students to the next grade. While accurate numbers on retention are difficult to obtain, available data suggest that far from being a seldom-used practice, grade retention a common experience for many of our nation's school-aged children. The American Federation of Teachers (1997) estimated that between 15% to 19% of American students are retained in a grade per year and that in many large urban school districts, upwards of 50% of the students who enter kindergarten are likely to be retained at least once before they graduate drop out of school

Academic achievement · Grade retention · Mathematics education · Pedagogy · Political science · Promotion (chess) · Public relations · Early Childhood Education and Development · Education, Achievement, and Giftedness · Parental Involvement in Education · Psychology

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