When I was in middle school, I overheard two teachers talking about a student as he walked by. The exchange went something like this: Teacher 1, “Why is he still here, he’s much too old for middle school” to which Teacher 2 responded, “Oh yeah, he’s waiting to be socially promoted.”
I found it strange then that a student who was far older than his classmates would be allowed to simply hang around until he aged into the next grade level. Looking back, I realize that what was even more disturbing about the social promotion policy was not just that the student was much older than his classmates, but that the decision to move him to the next grade level was based only on his age, and had nothing to do with his academic preparation.
For someone who has always been skeptical of social promotion, the new RAND study results out of New York City are very promising. The study suggests that (shocker!) giving students additional academic help, instead of just moving them along to the next grade, actually helps them, well, improve academically.
Granted, these are early results. But, they’re encouraging and hopefully will persuade more school districts to rethink social promotion policies.
Lowering Student Loan Default Rates: What One Consortium of Historically Black Institutions Did to Succeed 
College and Career-Ready: Using Outcomes Data to Hold High Schools Accountable for Student Success
03/19/10 | Ben Miller is quoted on college graduation rates and the NCAA Tournament in the Detroit Free Press.
03/19/10 | Linda Perlstein links to Education Sector's "College- and Career-Ready" event.
03/17/10 | Ben Miller's column on graduation rates and NCAA Tournament eligibility is mentioned on The Wall Street Journal's The Daily Fix.
03/17/10 | Kevin Carey's critique of Diane Ravitch's latest book is quoted in Doublethink's Conventional Folly blog.
03/15/10 | Ben Miller pens an op-ed for US News & World Report on using graduation rates to determine NCAA Tournament eligibility.
As a parent that held both of her sons back in government schools due to maturity issues, it was the best decision I ever made. With my older son I had to push the principal to get it done. With my second son the kindergarten teacher and I were in complete agreement. Today, I have two very mature young men who understand what it takes to be successful in high school and college.
Since so many of the kids struggling today in government schools are male why not raise the age of kindergarten to six. Boys truly need more time to mature…of course an excellent pre-school program is a given, too.
Thanks
Two questions: 1. What’s so difficult about giving them the extra help the first time around? 2. Why can’t they get the extra help in the next grade?
Erin,
Given the very low numbers of NYC retention in any of the years, I don’t think the RAND study tells us much (nor would any). The retention policies of far more important are those in Chicago and Florida. Melissa Roderick’s later reports on Chicago are pretty damning, and as far as I know no one has followed up on the local opportunity to use the 2006 errors in third-grade FCATS as a natural experiment to evaluate the Florida policy.
And as I’ve said many times, most of the research literature on promotion compares retention with no systematic intervention to promotion with no systematic intervention (and I include Florida and Chicago in the “retention with no systematic intervention” categories). That’s essentially a choice between promoting and praying or retaining and praying, and neither is an appropriate choice.