In years past, when a child did not perform adequately enough to reach a grade level benchmark, that child would be considered a candidate for retention. In general, this practice makes sense. Some children need a little more time to develop and so, as educators, we give them that time. Yet, nowadays, this type of common sense behavior doesn't seem as common. More often than not, under-performing students are being advanced to the next grade level before they are ready academically. Is this wrong? There are many reasons for this practice with one reason being that often times these children are more physically mature than their younger peers. To retain them would be to engage them in an awkward social situation that might be emotionally scarring.
Yet I don't see how advancing a child who is not ready academically would necessarily spare that same child from feelings of discomfort. Is it unreasonable to think that this child might continue to struggle academically? Might the learning challenges of this child cause them to feel inadequate and uncomfortable?
So which answer is the right answer? Do educators try to improve the social lives of their students or the academic lives? If only the choice were that simple.
Below are a few links related to the topic of retention. Check them out to form your own opinion on this issue.
Schools Get Tough With Third-Graders: Read or Flunk
Making Retention a Last Resort
Kate I loved that you posted this. Now this would have been a great debatable topic for our educational issues course. I see both sides and each year make suggestions for retention in Pre-K or suggest that if a student moves on they may need to consider retaining in kindergarten. I personally feel each child's home life is so different that sometimes I suggest moving to kindergarten because I know they'll be in a classroom 5 days a week instead of repeating a 3 day a week program. I think Kindergarten and First grade is the place to focus on and decide if it is an early intervention provided by the school or repeating the grade. I was surprised at the article's focus on third grade. In our content area literacy class we read students should be reading to learn well before grade 3. Thanks for posting.
ReplyDeleteThe social/emotional life of a child trumps the academic one, in my opinion. New research indicates retention is detrimental to a child's emotional well being. I firmly believe this. Traditional educators are in the business of moving students along at the same pace and shooting for the middle of the grade spectrum. We fail to see that academics is but a very small part of the student's life. Growing up and navigating life takes precedence over academics. That's what students are thinking about. When we retain (past prek or K)we run the risk of doing emotional harm that may have lasting repercussions such as self esteem. Yes, students may struggle and we worry that keeping them in their grade will result in low self esteem. But keeping them back is far worse than staying with your peers. Eventually, most students will catch up. My son who was retained in 1st grade has never let me forget how much he hated it, and he did catch up and even surpassed academically most of his class. Yet, he lost most of his friends because they would not accept him in a lower grade. This is a very hot topic and people have strong feelings about it (can you tell? lol). What a great topic to bring up Kate! Thanks, it is something we should all be thinking about.
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