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In NYC, the Department of Education will soon vote on whether to ease the requirements of promoting students from one grade to the next.
Grade retention (“being held back”) has always been a controversial subject, teetering between arguments that:
- It’s most important for a student learn and retain material, regardless of how long it takes
- The value of holding children back is outweighed by its negative effects (the impact on students’ confidence and self-esteem among them)
Dr. Andrew Biemiller (University of Toronto) notes that he has “long thought that we need to allow for different rates of learning, rather than allow for large differences in mastery of basic academic skills.”
He continues:
The point is not to have students simply repeat grades when they don't progress well, but rather to take enough time to acquire and consolidate skills and vocabulary when first studied. I suggest that if we accepted that students might vary by two years when they complete 8th grade (and are thus ready for high school)—and possibly vary by another year when they complete high school— many more students would complete high school able to read and write well, able to make reasonable use of mathematics, and with a good grasp of both government in the U.S. and of the basics of science.
Dr. Biemiller’s views come in contrast to those of Shael Polakow-Suransky (Chief Academic Officer for New York City) who was quoted in a Wall Street Journal piece earlier this month.
“The issues is, if you have a kid who's 15 with a bunch of 11-year-olds, it doesn't make sense at that point for them to continue to retake the same grade over and over again,” he says. “This is a kid who's clearly struggling no matter what grade they're in.”
The results of the vote—and its subsequent effect on students in NYC—remains to be seen.
References:
Biemiller, A. (1993). Lake Wobegon revisited: On diversity and education. Educational Researcher, 22 (Dec.), pp 7-12.
