Grade retention, also known as “being held back” or “repeating”, has been a controversy within the educational system. Grade retention is requiring a student to return to a grade for further education, because he or she did not demonstrate a knowledge of the skills. Retention has many benefits that can be seen in students, but it also has its negative effects as well. Many educators have views about when students should be retained. There are things that educators look at when deciding whether to retain a student, including: academic achievements, assessments, and the background of the students. Some studies mention other interventions to be used in place of grade retention, which include academic redshirting. Grade retention is an issue that …show more content…
Most studies show that students should be retained in the early grades. Krier’s study stated most students should be retained in kindergarten and first grade, but Renaud said, “most teachers felt that if a child [was] retained in the years between kindergarten and fourth grade it would be beneficial.” Some educators feel the students should be retained by the third grade or they will fall too far behind. Of these educators, “64 percent of teachers and 68 percent of principals stated they would use retention again” (Range). Some educators do not want the student to fall behind so they use preemptive retention. Preemptive retention is retaining students before they fail, because the educators feel the child is immature or believe they will fail in the future. Martin describes this preemptive retention as a nativist view. A nativist person would say that a child releases himself or herself, which allows his or her brain to learn new information, when he or she are biologically ready to learn. They feel that “if children are pushed beyond their abilities or do not ‘fit’ with their environment, there is a greater risk of academic failure” (Martin 740). This can mean that if a child does not have the capability to learn the information they would benefit from being retained until they can learn it. On the other side a constructivist view …show more content…
Grade retention can cause different effects for the school system, teachers, parents, and students. The school system will have extra costs that come with educating the students an extra year. As Lamb explains, “it is expensive and requires an extra year before the students can enter into the job force.” Grade retention can cause an increase of responsibilities for the teachers and administration. Teachers deal with larger class sizes and it forces them “to deal with under-prepared student while trying to teach the prepared” as well. The student can experience many different negative effects due to retention. Students can feel punished, sad, and upset and it can influence their social and mental well-being. Peterson states that personal adjustment, self-concept, school attendance, and the attitude towards school can change when a child is retained. Retaining students has been linked to the likelihood that the children would be placed in special education. Students seem to have poorer interactions with other student, dislike school, or have behavioral problems when retained. This explains that students are “5-11 time more likely to drop out of school” (Jimerson). In a survey of 6th graders, by Anderson, retention was one of the most feared events after the loss of a parent and going blind. This shows that the thought of grade retention can make the student’s stress levels rise, which is not a good
The founders of the American public school system had a dream that all of America’s youth would have the opportunity to attend school in the best way possible for the times. The educational leaders of today must take up the same mission of providing the best school system imaginable for our modern era. Yearlong education is the solution to many problems that plague teachers, students, and school budgets.
The practice of delaying a child’s enrollment in kindergarten until age 6 instead of the standard enrollment age of 5 is known as pre-primary academic redshirting. Originally the practice of holding back a child for a year from entering kindergarten in order to provide them an athletic advantage due to advanced physical maturity, the practice of redshirting has developed an emphasis on academic maturity, as redshirting allows students to enter kindergarten having an advantage over their younger and less mature peers in terms of academic preparedness. Redshirting for academic purposes has been on the rise in American schools, as nearly 17% of children in 2008 were admitted to kindergarten at age 6, whereas only 9% of children were admitted to kindergarten at age 6 back in 1993. The sudden increase in redshirting creates significant age and ability gaps in kindergarten classes, providing redshirted children with a better chance of academic success than their younger peers due to more maturity. However, redshirting is not
How could holding back a student in a grade longer than average help them? Would not it just make them feel as if they were slower than others? Which could make them develop into something they're not.Academic Achievement of kids who are retained for advancing to the next grades poorer that, that of peers who are promoted. ( http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/health/659-repeating-a-grade.gs?page=all ) Deciding to hold back a student for not successfully completing their grade could result in many problems, such as : low self - esteem, hinderance in the child's development, and the child could become an issue.
Two commonly accepted indicators of college achievement include cumulative GPA and college persistence. Grade point average is generally considered the most reliable measure of academic performance, and studies have found that both high school and first-year college GPAs are strong predictors of degree attainment (Beatty, Walmsley, Sackett, Kuncel, & Koch, 2015; Stewart, Lim, & Kim, 2015). College persistence encompasses various components related to retention. For example, some researchers have conceptualized persistence as a student’s decision to reenroll in courses for the following term, while others define it as a student’s perseverance that leads to graduation (Braxton, Jones, Hirschy, and Harley III, 2008; Arnold, 1999). Traditionally, college persistence has been assessed through questionnaires, first-term and first-year completion, and enrollment in the second academic year (Arnold, 1999; Davidson, 1999; Astin, 1993).
Azzam, Amy M. "Why Students Drop Out." Educational Leadership 64.7 (2007): 91. MAS Ultra - School Edition. Web. 7 Feb. 2014.
Academic Concerns Regarding Incoming High Students. A critical educational shift occurs in ninth grade; from a primary school focus of learning skills to a new high school focus of attaining credit and meeting state and local school district graduation requirements. Low academic achievement and grade promotion in middle school has created students who are academically deficient in skills needed to be successful in a more independent environment. A high percentage of students who are at risk for early dropout or an alternative timeline for graduation are retained in the ninth grade (Samel et al., 2011). Promotion to the tenth grade includes, passing at least “five full-year courses is a common standard for promotion to the tenth grade”
Punishment systems and reward systems only deliver short term benefits and sometimes don’t deliver at all. If grades and praise are a student’s only motivation, then once the student is outside of academia, then, with no source of grades and praise, they will no longer be motivated to learn. Pushes him/herself to think deeper about issues and draw connections to their personal, academic, and professional lives. A person with this attitude has a perspective that allows them to look beyond day-to-day academic tasks and view the broader picture of their life. This encourages healthy, long-term decisions.
Grading tends to take its toll early in life. It forecloses on the hopes and aspirations of many students and causes them to decreases academic ranks, lower social status, and reduced employment possibilities before their potential has a chance to be proven. With this disposition children don't believe their academic efforts have any solution. Also, once grades are put into their record, students tend to be conditioned to receive them. With this disposition children don't believe their academic efforts have any payoff.
Hindering a student’s performance with a bad grade in the middle of the year can make them give up for the rest of the year. Once a student has received a bad grade they might lose faith in their academic ability. By giving up a student does not reflect their academic ability and their bad grades are not based on what they learned.
Grade retention seems like a reasonable solution to a serious problem. A child is significantly behind their peers, maybe they are emotionally immature, or they cannot quite grasp what is being taught to them. The first thing to do is make sure the child does not have a learning disability, after that, it is determined that since this child is falling so far behind there is no other option than to hold them back a grade. This will ensure that they have time to catch up with their classmates and move on to have a successful school career. Schools implement this every year, despite the research proving how unsuccessful grade retention is. There is no clear cut way to help a struggling child. Children learn in such diverse ways. It is a challenge to help someone falling behind, it takes time, effort and research to realize what is going to be effective for a struggling student. Grade retention is harmful to the student, it negatively impacts the child’s academics, it leads to early dropout, their self-esteem suffers, and it is not a cost effective way to help a child succeed.
Brian Jacob, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and education professor at the University of Michigan, found that retention could cost a school district around $10,000 per student (Jacob). In 2016, only 45% of Michigan third-graders scored at or above proficiency level in reading (Jacob). If the state had enacted a law requiring third graders to pass a mandatory reading test before they moved up to fourth grade, around 60,000 students would have been held back, causing the state more than a half billion dollars (Jacob). Not only is retention costly to a district, it is also a financial burden to society. The article “Pass or Fail: The Real Cost of Student Retention” states that some retained students have a higher likelihood of dropping out of high school, which means that they are more likely to acquire lower earnings in the future.
Average grading diminishes a student’s interest in what they are learning and promotes fear of failure. The promoted fear of failure is the disadvantage of not having long term assignments. A student who has excellent thinking, but does not have the knowledge (for whatever reason) will get worse grades than one who just memorizes textbooks without actually understanding the essence of what they're learning. If we take away the fear of failure, we allow students to develop, flourish and become more competent. With students becoming more confident about their education, they begin to enjoy it more and set higher and higher goals for themselves to
Problem Background Grade retention, also known as grade repetition, is defined as “repeating an academic year of school” and is considered to be “the opposite of social promotion, in which children continue with their age peers regardless of academic performance” (Advameg, Inc., 2014). There have been several studies on the effects of grade retention, along with studies that link grade retention to high school dropout rates; however, the studies also indicate that grade retention is not the only cause for high school dropouts and dropping out of school is not the only effect of grade retention. Both grade retention and social promotion lie on opposite ends of the spectrum and appear to have the same goal which is possibly flawed logically:
Dropouts in school have been an important topic in education since the number of students that are dropping out has been increasing over the years. There is more than one reason students decide to leave school before graduating from high school. In the Gate Foundation report, they do a survey to investigate the main reasons of why students of age 16-25 years old drop out of high school. According to the Gate Foundation report, they are five main reasons why students are dropping out of school. Almost half of the students in the survey responded that one of the major reasons of dropping out of high school was because classes were not interesting or boring. It is true that if a person does not feel interested of learning something, then it can
Education is the key to success and there are multiple ways to boost a student’s confidence while attending high school to enhance a better future for his/herself. It is our job as parents and faculty to keep the students engaged and aware of the repercussions of dropping out and to do everything in our power to keep the students productive and interactive to ensure a bright