Over at my Education Week Teacher column, I’ll be soon answering a question related to grade retention and social promotion. As part of my answer, I thought I’d put together a list of useful online resources.
Here are my choices for The Best Resources For Learning About Grade Retention, Social Promotion & Alternatives To Both:
Critical Issue: Beyond Social Promotion and Retention—Five Strategies to Help Students Succeed is from North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.
Grade Retention and Promotion: Information for Parents is from The National Association of School Psychologists.
Grade Retention: Achievement and Mental Health Outcomes is also from NASP.
Chicago’s Social Promotion Ban Quietly Fades is from Education Week.
OECD: Holding Back, Expelling Students Weakens Ed. Systems is also from Ed Week.
Designs For Change in Chicago developed a report on the topic.
Research Finds Fault with Chicago’s Retention Program is by Donald Moore at Designs for Change.
Testing and Grade Retention is a report from Fair Test.
Grade Retention: Still a Failed Policy is also from Fair Test.
Grade Retention is from Pearson Education.
The Consortium on Chicago School Research has produced a series of Ending Social Promotion reports.
This one is a bit dated, but still useful: Retention In Grade Fails Children by the late Gerald Bracey.
Several states are considering requiring mandatory retention of third graders who don’t read at grade level. Here are some articles and posts about this insanity, and I’m adding them to this list:
Schools Get Tough With Third-Graders: Read Or Flunk is from NPR.
Third Grade Again: The Trouble With Holding Students Back is from The Atlantic.
Retention Costs More, Accomplishes Less is from Robert Slavin at Ed Week.
Flunking 3rd Graders is Not an Intervention is by John Wilson at Ed Week.
The Opposite Of Social Promotion is by Nancy Flanagan at Ed Week.
Flawed, ideological, non-peer-reviewed studies should not rebut decades of anti-retention research is from Scott McLeod.
Civil Rights Data Show Retention Disparities is from Education Week.
Feedback is always welcome.
If you found this post useful, you might want to consider subscribing to this blog for free.
You might also want to explore the 750 other “The Best…” lists I’ve compiled.
September 6, 2011 at 7:29 am
This is great; very helpful and we’re forming a placement policy in our school. I look forward to your Edweek column.
August 22, 2012 at 6:45 pm
Hi Larry,
Came across your site today. Excellent work.
I want to ask you to review a page of mine; perhaps you already have and have found it wanting?
If so, please tell me. Glad to get feedback.
If not, I would be honored if you found it worthy of consideration.
You must be a star performer. Perhaps by now, you are retired too. Never mind, those of us who have retired still have much to contribute; our collected wisdom cannot go to waste, and a blog like yours is a way to keep it going. For the benefit of all.
Here is the link, and am referring to one topic, social promotion. But there are other topics on my site as well; such as “rebuilding a teaching culture” that might be of interest to you.
http://www.writingachievement.com/Retention.htm
Once you get there, you can surf through other pages if they seem of interest to you.
Best wishes
Bruce Saari