School Retention vs. Social Promotion

School retention vs. social promotion

Effect of school retention or social promotion on teacher and student performance

From the respondents, it emerged that there is a lot of pressure on the schools to retain students who do not perform well in their academics. However, it emerged that there is little benefit of school retention since though the students are retained, they run the risk of being retained for a second time if their academics do not improve. This is similar to the result that was found by Tsao, Lin, Pitt, and Campbell (2009)

that though nearly three out of every ten students had to be retained or to attend summer school, they still made insufficient progress during their repeat year. Therefore they run the risk of being retained for another year.

A good number of the respondents also stated that schools have over the years tightened their strict promotion standards in order to reduce the accommodation of social promotion. They felt that though it is integral for students to be together with their peers regardless of their academic achievement, academic performance is important in order to maintain high standards in schools. As highlighted by / /, schools must always have benchmarks or gateways which can only be achieved by eliminating social promotion.

The result of the study also highlighted the importance of accountability in school retention. Some respondents pointed at the commonsense nature of accountability though it emerged that it was not so common. The reason why accountability is important can be drawn from Jacob and Lefgren (2009)

who argues that in retaining students, there is need for the decision-making process to be transparent and to allow for accountability. Borderline students should be socially promoted since the negative effects of school retention may outweigh the positive effects expected to be achieved from retention.

The findings of this study are slightly different from those that are reported in Rumberger and Palardy (2005)

. The authors argue that school retention does not have any positive effects at all. The findings of their study were that the practice of school retention did not help the students to improve their test scores and in fact was harmful to their self-esteem which created a vicious cycle. They said that it does not 'buy them extra time' neither does it provide them with an opportunity to 'consolidate their skills' which are the desired effects of retention. They also argued that to some extent, school retention contributed to the high number of dropouts from schools. A similar account is given in Lee and Burkam (2003)

. This can be associated with the self-esteem problems that those who are retained experience. According to the authors, the students who are retained are simply required to repeat the same curriculum which they have already failed once. This, according to the authors, is a prescription for further failure since no extra effort is put in for the children to improve their performance.

The argument presented by these authors is also supported by one respondent from this study who stated that children do not get better over time even though they are retained. Instead of retaining the underperforming students, it may be better to analyze their need for special education or extra effort in order to improve their performance. This is the only way which their performance can be improved. The assumption that children will perform better once they are forced to repeat and an expectation of better performance is placed on them is simply horribly wrong and misdirected.

Criterion used to determine social promotion or retention

The criteria for social promotion according to most of the respondents were majorly based on age and presence of disability. According to the respondents, each case of social promotion was handled uniquely since they had to sit in and decide whether the child met specific guidelines for social promotion. Students with disability were majorly given a free pass since it is thought that their disability impacts negatively on their performance. This was also done to improve their self-esteem though they were disabled. For school retention, the major reason for support of this was academic achievement. If the child does not meet the set benchmarks for performance, the decision-making panel simply agreed to retention of the student. There was no formal assessment system for this decision process.

These results were supported by the result of the study conducted by Hong and Raudenbush (2006)

who found that student achievement were used in state and district schools to decide social promotion vs. school retention instead of formal systems of assessment of student performance. According to these findings, the schools that used academic achievement as the main criterion for social promotion did not bother to understand how the decision affected the student for who the decision was being made and the other students in general. The findings of these authors showed that these were very important aspects in the general performance of the school itself and the students.

The stakeholders that were involved in the process were majorly the members of the school board, class teacher, and administrators. Parents were not involved in the process and were simply informed of the outcome of the process. This was thought to be better since the decision for social promotion can be marred by social pressure if the parent is involved. This is because if social promotion is not accepted for the child, the child will have to be retained.

Involvement of parents in school retention vs. social promotion decisions

The respondents showed mixed feelings on the importance of parents being involved in the decision process. This was in line with the findings of Hong and Raudenbush (2005)