This year, one of the Governor’s main education goals is to stop the social promoti0n of students from 3rd grade. I assume that the premise for this is the understanding that failure to be on track at the end of this grade will likely doom a student to being behind his peers for the remainder of his schooling. Although there is plenty of research to support that this is true, research also shows that retaining students will rarely have the desired effect. Students wh0 are held back usually fail to catch up, are more likely to drop out and more importantly, are often scarred with the label of failure. What then, should we do do with a student who, at the end of 3rd grade, is behind his peers?
The easy answer is to not let them fall behind. We have an elaborate system of recognizing students’ learning deficits and apply a series of interventions to help them overcome these. We expend a lot of energy helping students catch up. We also now devote federal Title I funds to early childhood education and our findings suggest that our students who attend preschool will do better than those who do not. I feel that we are doing a good job with proactively helping our primary students who are not making the necessary gains.
The more difficult answer includes rethinking how we structure our students within our school system. Is strict division of students by age the best way to go? Should we expect that a class of 25 kindergartners will all be at the same academic place four years later at the end of 3rd grade? Yes, we aspire to this, but no, realistically we know that this is unlikely.
Rather than make a student repeat 3rd grade, we should be able to structure the learning environment in a way that allows a school to address areas where students are not making the necessary gains. A retained student returns to school in August and sees last year’s peers move on to a new classroom while he stays put with a new group of younger students. There may be times when it is necessary to do this, but I don’t feel that we should have a rigid system that uses the results of a test in April of 3rd grade to determine whether a student can advance. The results of this test should be used to inform instruction, not cause a repeat of what occurred the previous year.
As we struggle to identify the priorities for funding, it seems that money for early childhood education should come at the top of the list. A quality early childhood experience will cause the retention conversation to fade away.
Retaining 3rd Graders
This year, one of the Governor’s main education goals is to stop the social promoti0n of students from 3rd grade. I assume that the premise for this is the understanding that failure to be on track at the end of this grade will likely doom a student to being behind his peers for the remainder of his schooling. Although there is plenty of research to support that this is true, research also shows that retaining students will rarely have the desired effect. Students wh0 are held back usually fail to catch up, are more likely to drop out and more importantly, are often scarred with the label of failure. What then, should we do do with a student who, at the end of 3rd grade, is behind his peers?
The easy answer is to not let them fall behind. We have an elaborate system of recognizing students’ learning deficits and apply a series of interventions to help them overcome these. We expend a lot of energy helping students catch up. We also now devote federal Title I funds to early childhood education and our findings suggest that our students who attend preschool will do better than those who do not. I feel that we are doing a good job with proactively helping our primary students who are not making the necessary gains.
The more difficult answer includes rethinking how we structure our students within our school system. Is strict division of students by age the best way to go? Should we expect that a class of 25 kindergartners will all be at the same academic place four years later at the end of 3rd grade? Yes, we aspire to this, but no, realistically we know that this is unlikely.
Rather than make a student repeat 3rd grade, we should be able to structure the learning environment in a way that allows a school to address areas where students are not making the necessary gains. A retained student returns to school in August and sees last year’s peers move on to a new classroom while he stays put with a new group of younger students. There may be times when it is necessary to do this, but I don’t feel that we should have a rigid system that uses the results of a test in April of 3rd grade to determine whether a student can advance. The results of this test should be used to inform instruction, not cause a repeat of what occurred the previous year.
As we struggle to identify the priorities for funding, it seems that money for early childhood education should come at the top of the list. A quality early childhood experience will cause the retention conversation to fade away.