Is Retention the Thing Holding Students Back?
As the tension in the room grows even more palpable, the teacher motions for the parents to sit down. They know what’s coming but don’t want to hear the words. “Unfortunately”, she says unaffectedly, “we’ll have to hold back your son to repeat the third grade.” The confusion in the room can almost be heard and is met with a meager, “it’s state policy, you understand”. Questions come faster than they can be processed.
What does this mean? Why did this happen? What can we do? How can we change this?
This is a situation that parents all over the country are finding themselves in. According to a study done by the University of Minnesota, nearly 450,000 students are retained each year (http//www.soc.umn.edu:~warre046:Warren & Saliba.pdf).
And while this number only makes up between three and four percent of the total amount of students enrolled in public school, there is little evidence to support the implementation of retention at all. Which begs the question— where is this coming from?
Retention is certainly not a new concept, but until recently it was one that was discussed and decided upon on an individual and personal basis, usually involving teachers, parents, and the principal. Nowadays, it is the exact opposite. Across the country there are currently sixteen states that have mandatory retention laws in place (Retention Laws), with more thinking about it every day. Most focus on third grade where many believe students transition from learning to read into reading to learn. But where do these laws come from? It would seem that an examination of policy is crucial when it directly affects students across the country.
When electing your state representatives the hot button of education is most likely to come up, but when you’re punching that ballot, do you realize that you’re signing over your right to dictate your child’s educational future? Here in Indiana, third grade retention is state policy. That’s saying that one wrong answer could mean the difference between repeating a grade and moving forward as planned. One answer. No matter how hard the parents’ plea or the personal feelings of the teacher; if the test says so, it is so. No exceptions. So how did we move from looking at students at an individual level to judging them based on the standardization of a test?
The Inception of Retention As We Know It
In 2002, Florida was the first state to implement a statewide retention law for students. It mandated that, “third grade students scoring below level two (of five performance levels) on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in reading be retained and provided with intensive remediation unless they qualify for one of six ‘good cause exemptions.’” (http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2012/08/16-student-retention-west).
These ideas were based off of the widely held idea that third grade year is the key transition for students as they move to upper elementary in terms of reading skills. Others argue that that transition is actually a gradual one and that the focus on third grade is largely due to the fact that third grade is the earliest in which students are tested at the state level. No matter the reasoning behind it, the policies were mandated to the entire state of Florida with little to no wiggle room.
This policy drastically increased the number of students retained in third grade from 2.8% to 13.5% all in the course of a year. In a study examining the effects and patterns of Florida’s retention policies, Martin R. West (2012) wrote,
“Consistent with national patterns, the students retained under Florida’s test-based promotion policy are disproportionately black and Hispanic. Black students represented just 22 percent of Florida third graders between 2003 and 2008 but fully 40 percent of those who were retained. Hispanics accounted for 24 percent of all third graders but 29 percent of those retained. The over-representation of blacks and Hispanics among retained third graders reflects the fact that students in these groups are more likely to have reading test scores below the promotion standard. In fact, controlling for reading performance, black and Hispanic students are two percentage points less likely than white students to be retained.”
This examination of the retention in Florida indicated early on that there might be limitations and restrictions regarding the benefits and helpfulness of third-grade retention, but nonetheless many states followed in Florida’s footsteps in the subsequent years, creating retention legislature of their own. Studies of these states showed improvement in the year immediately following retention which is what most people chose to focus on, but other evidence suggesting that retention wasn’t as effective as they were saying was widely ignored. And discrepancies in how to deal with these retention tests varied from state to state creating an even larger issue. But despite the implications and beliefs of these states or the variations that they implement on retention, the fact remains that
“Policies encouraging the retention of students who have not acquired basic reading skills by third grade are no substitute for the development of a comprehensive strategy to reduce the number of struggling readers.” (West, 2012)
Florida’s apparent “success” with retention laws created a greater push for more, making it easy to ignore other comprehensive options or gather more data to examine their effectiveness. But if you’re like many other people reading this, then you’re wondering if these programs really were successful or if they were just the easiest and most uniform things to appear to lessen the achievement gap. Unfortunately, there is no clear answer to that question.
The Aftermath
If the goal is to try and quantify and standardize public schools, then you’d think that policy makers would try and even the playing field state-to-state. Instead, there is an incredible amount of variance both on the state and national level, which goes to show that states might be continuing to implement a tactic that isn’t necessarily supported or rooted in fact.
“Despite extensive research on the predictors and consequences of grade retention, there is no systematic way to quantify state-level retention rates; even national estimates rely on imperfect proxy measures”(Warren, Saliba, 2012)
So what exactly are the facts and ramifications from the widespread implementation and growing popularity of retention?
“What’s the point?” you ask. Others are asking it to. With data showing that students who were retained don’t maintain any academic boost past grade school and that in the long run retention has detrimental effects, retention seems unnecessary. Which begs the question, why is it being implemented at all?
Upon first glance of the data, it may seem like retention has an incredibly high success rate, and on the surface that would be true. Studies have shown that in fourth grade, third graders who were retained, outperform their peers.
By fifth grade, the gap is wider but by sixth and seventh grade, however, that gap is relatively normal and isn’t necessarily due to the fact that students are retained, especially given that there is always a variance amongst student achievement. The academic improvements in students who were retained are usually short-term and the other detrimental affects are long term.
Yet these long-term trajectories seem to get overlooked. In multiple studies across the country with varying factors, it is widely seen that grade retention is associated with a number of factors including gender, race, age, family, prior academic history, SES, behavioral and socio-emotional development; yet grade retention policies only rely on a standardized test to make the decision. Standardizing such a multi-faceted situation disregards the importance of the issue at hand. Is it merely the push to have more test-based accountability in our school system or are state policies pushing mandates that haven’t been researched enough? That is the issue at hand.
What Does This Mean for Kids?
The opinion most widely held is that there isn’t enough research or data to support mandated retention and that there are other confounding factors that outweigh any apparent positive affects of retention such as emotional stability, dropout rates, and achievements after school. In a report done by Nancy Frey she adamantly states,
“The seeds of failure may be sown early for students who are retained, as they are significantly more likely to drop out of high school. Furthermore, the trajectory of adverse outcomes appears to continue into young adulthood, when wages and postsecondary educational opportunities are depressed”
So are states with retention policies setting up the majority of their students to fail later in life? Most would argue yes. The only thing that can be said for sure is that test based promotion policies, in order to be effective in the way that most are saying they are, MUST be accompanied with additional support and instruction. Merely maintaining a student, research shows, will do more harm than good and any academic improvements will be non-existent after elementary school. But when retention is implemented on a true need basis and accompanied with matching support that accompany the child through the year that they are retained, academic improvement is possible. The graphic below displays this idea, that matching students who run the risk of being retained or who have been retained with the additional supports and supplemental instruction that they need proves to be incredibly successful whereas just retaining a student shows little to now improvement and may hurt the student in the long run.
Now what?
With opposing sides, lack of research, policy implementation, and many other factors to consider, it’s hard to think of where our education system moves from here or what all of this means. That in-of-itself shows that these policies need some re-thinking. What’s important to remember is that while there might be a push for standardization and test-based accountability in our education system, at the other end of that test is a student whose academic future is on the line. Students are multi-faceted and when their futures and academic success is determined by a test that doesn’t take into account anything other than a right or wrong answer, there is something wrong with that. With little evidence that supports retention as being beneficial in the long-run and data to show that retention is detrimental in a variety of other ways, it becomes more imperative that students, parents, and educators begin to push for more from their policy makers. Especially in states that are trying to follow in Florida’s footsteps.
“Decades of research suggest that grade retention does not work as a panacea for poor student performance. The majority of research fails to find compelling evidence that retention improves long-term student achievement. An overwhelmingly large body of studies have consistently demonstrated negative academic effects of retention. Contrary to popular belief, researchers have almost unanimously found that early retention during kindergarten to grade three is harmful, both academically and emotionally.” (http://childandfamilypolicy.duke.edu/pdfs/pubpres/FlawedStrategy_PartOne.pdf)
So ask yourself, why are states across the country mandating something that is harmful to children? No matter your personal opinion or investment in the issue of retention, it is overwhelmingly clear that these policies, if nothing else, are not based in enough research or comprehensive facts to be so widely and strongly implemented.
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Sources
-Moser, S. E., West, S. G., & Hughes, J. N. (2012). Trajectories of math and reading achievement in low-achieving children in elementary school: Effects of early and later retention in grade. Journal Of Educational Psychology, 104(3), 603–621. doi:10.1037/a0027571
-Gottfried, M. A. (2012). Reframing Retention: new evidence from within the elementary school classroom on post-retention performance. Elementary School Journal, 113(2), 192–214.
-The Becoming Radical (2014). The Conversation UK: Keeping Children Back a Year Doesn’t Help Them Read Better. Retrieved from http://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2014/09/03/the-conversation-uk-keeping-children-back-a-year-doesnt-help-them-read-better/
-Smith (2012). Retaining Students in Grade: Consequences for Florida. Educational Policy Studies Laboratory, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED48373
-Xia, N. & Glennie, E. (2005). Grade Retention: A Flawed Education Strategy. Durham, NC. Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy. Policy Brief (pg. 1–8).
-West, M.R. (2012). Is Retaining Students In the Early Grades Self-Defeating? (published paper)
-Warren, J. R., & Saliba, J. (2012). First through Eighth Grade Retention Rates for All 50 States: A New Method and Initial Results. (pg.1–23)
-Rose (2012). Third Grade Reading Policies. Reading Literacy P-3 (pg.1–16)
-Winters, M. (2012). The Benefits of Florida’s Test-Based Promotion System. Civic Report No. 68.
