I promised myself a long time ago I wouldn’t fall into the trap of using valuable time debating the positives or negatives of traditional school retention policies.
But I came across an article this past week in EducationWeek that caused me to want to address how outdated retention is – especially during this period of anytime, anywhere learning.
Sarah Schwartz, an EducationWeek reporter, writes,
“Holding students back is a controversial policy decision. Opponents argue that it further disadvantages students and falls disproportionately on those who are already marginalized; advocates claim it can trigger the interventions and support that students urgently need.”
“Many states have legislation that requires schools to consider grade retention in one specific instance: if students don’t pass a 3rd grade reading exam. Most states paused these policies during the early months of the pandemic, but they’ve since restarted. And a few states have considered passing them along with new laws designed to mandate evidence-based reading instruction.”
“Overall, retention has decreased in the past decades. From 2000 to 2016, the percentage of students held back in a grade decreased from 3.1 to 1.9 percent. Still, there are disparities between student groups.”
“As of 2016, 2.6 percent of Black K-8 students were retained, compared to 1.5 percent of white students and Hispanic students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.”
“In some cases, the consequences of retention affect students of color more than their white peers, too. One recent study found that being held back in elementary grades increases the odds of dropping out of high school, and that these effects were strongest for Black and Latino girls.”
“One of the most-cited research papers on grade retention is a 2001 meta-analysis from Shane Jimerson, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.”
“Jimerson looked at 20 studies published between 1990 and 1999, and concluded that they ‘fail to demonstrate that grade retention provides greater benefits to students with academic or adjustment difficulties than does promotion to the next grade.’ In many studies, students who were retained had worse academic achievement and social-emotional outcomes than students who were not.”
“Another research review from Jimerson and his colleagues, this one published in 2002, found that grade retention was also linked strongly to dropping out of high school.”
“More recent research concludes that studies that used more tightly controlled methodology – such as more closely matched comparison groups for retained students and higher-quality statistical controls – show fewer negative consequences of retention.”
“Researchers at Texas A&M University and the University of North Texas evaluated 22 studies published between 1990 and 2007 in a 2009 meta-analysis. They found that it mattered how similar retained students were to the control group of students who weren’t retained. When studies controlled for these differences, the negative effects of retention on achievement disappeared.”
“Still, the authors wrote, ‘these results provide little support for proponents of grade retention.’ These stronger studies didn’t show negative effects, but they didn’t show positive results either. They had a very small effect size, which the researchers wrote was ‘not practically or statistically significantly different from 0.’”
“A few recent studies suggest that, under certain conditions, retention could help. Both of these newer studies are from Florida, which has had a 3rd grade retention policy in place since 2003. Students who don’t pass a 3rd grade reading exam can be retained – and if they are, the state requires schools to develop reading support plans for them, and to place those students with an effective teacher.”
“A 2017 analysis of student outcomes under this system found that kids who were retained had big initial gains in achievement. But within five years, the score increases faded out, and these students weren’t doing any better than their same-age peers.”
“Still, the researchers found that students who were retained had higher grade point averages and took fewer remedial courses in high school than students who had similar reading abilities but weren’t held back.”
“Another study found that English learners, specifically, also benefited from retention under the policy. Students who were held back learned English faster and took more advanced classes in later grades than their peers who also struggled but moved to the 4th grade.”
“When this study came out in 2019, it was intensely scrutinized by the English learner research community. Many of those researchers argued that the study’s findings didn’t provide enough evidence to determine that retention was a good strategy for ELs writ large.”
Honestly, this article could have been written 20 years ago, or 40. And it probably was.
Retention policies, and let’s go ahead and add absentee policies to that list, remind us of a time when learning was measured by the amount of time young learners spent in seats, attempting to improve their reading, writing, and problem-solving skills. Young learners were expected to learn these skills based on nine-month grade cycles, broken down into semesters and six-week intervals. Like retention, absentee policies expected the young learner to learn from 8:30 AM to 3 PM, August to May. If a young learner didn’t learn what they were expected to learn, then summer school was assigned. If summer school didn’t work, the young learner was retained and not allowed to move forward with their peers.
Wait! What I just described isn’t something from the past. Sadly, all of these archaic policies are still alive and well in our current public school system.
Over the past 40 years, what the traditional school system in this country hasn’t learned well at all is the fact that we now have the wherewithal to learn anytime and anywhere. But instead of embracing this ability, our current public school system has chosen to stay in the past by utilizing outdated practices like absentee and retention policies.
Honestly, in 2022, what does it really mean to be “absent” from learning? What does it mean to be “retained” because you didn’t learn enough during a randomly selected period of time?
We all know how the traditional public school system would answer those questions. To them, being “absent” from learning means being “absent” from school. And being “retained” means you need to spend an entire year working on a skill that you might learn in the next 20 days.
It’s amazing that we are still living in the world of “absenteeism” and “retention.” One would think we would be further along than what we are.
But I guess that’s the world we have chosen to live in.
Disappointing.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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