Grade retention timing and elementary student achievement outcomes

Elementary Student Achievement

Study Selection

Elementary School Achievement Study Selection

The creation and sustaining of achievement at the elementary school level is one of the most important and pivotal things that can be done to create and sustain lifelong success. As such, the factors and facets that make or break such achievement are sought out, analyzed and heavily focused on by scholars, teachers and parents alike. One way in which this paradigm is analyzed and looked at is the trajectory of lesser-achieving students and how they fare as they age and progress. Specifically, it is assessed how "holding back" a student in a grade for another year is damaging or helpful in the long run. While having a student repeat a grade can be damaging to self-esteem, pushing on a student that is not prepared for the next level just hurts that student as well as everyone else. The applicability of the research towards the broader topic being proposed by the author of this report as well as the submission guidelines for the journal in which the research appears will all be covered.

Journal Editorial Guidelines

The editorial guidelines for the Journal of Educational Psychology, the source of the study quickly summarized above, are not complex but are fairly firm. They have a "masked review" policy whereby the identities of the authors and the reviewers are all masked from view during the review process. The same goes for the educational affiliations of the author. The responsibility for the masking of the author information falls on the author and not on the American Psychological Association (APA, 2014). The study selected from the above-named journal is absolutely relevant to the research in question as it covers one of the main remedies used to deal with students that are clearly not achieving at a level that is consistent with what the child should know given their age and grade level. Of course, the stakes are high because once a student falls behind, it becomes harder and harder over the years to get them caught up.

Conclusion

There are certainly other dimensions and facets of elementary education and what goes into the creation and maintaining of the frameworks, standards and so forth that are used to assess outcomes and how to make them better for everyone. When one says "everyone," this should include making the most of the time spent when students are clearly ahead of the curve as well as how to quickly and efficiently handle and "catch up" students that are behind the curve. Also important is increasing the average scores and outcomes of all sorts including grade point average, economic results, societal results and cultural results. Irrespective of the pathway a person's life otherwise takes, giving them the best chance to succeed is paramount.