More on Social Promotion

by David Safier

Part 3 of the Star series on social promotion offers up some possible remedies, but as always when it comes to education, they are thin gruel. Not that they’re not good ideas and they won’t work. Not that they shouldn’t be done. But all of them have been done before. Sometimes they get results, other times they don’t. It depends on a thousand random and independent factors.

Among the many variables, one of the most important, I’ve found, is the buy-in by the teachers working in the new programs. If they’re passionate and talented, they’ll get results, while a school down the road with average, decent, unexcited teachers may use the same approach and show little or no progress.

Schools are not McDonalds franchises, where you simply duplicate what everyone else is doing and get consistent results. Education has a thousand variables. You can’t control the nature of students, parents, economic and social situations, facilities, teachers, or administrators. It’s a bit of a crap shoot.

I don’t mean this to be pessimistic, by the way, just realistic. Honestly, no one really knows what we mean by “education,” what we should stress in schools or when we should stress it, or the best way to get results. If anyone pretends to know the answers, be wary and suspicious.

My suggestion is, make peace with uncertainty. Do everything you can to increase the odds that students will be successful, but don’t expect miracles. Or, if you expect miracles, also expect to be disappointed on a regular basis.

The Star story agreed with my concern that ending social promotion would raise the dropout rate:

Students who must repeat a grade are 20 percent to 30 percent more likely than their peers to drop out, said Lorrie Shepard, dean of the school of education at the University of Colorado at Boulder. There also may be psychological aspects to retention, she said.

“There is typically a stigma associated with being retained,” said Shane Jimerson, a professor in the Department of Counseling, Clinical & School Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“Students, by the way, refer to it as being flunked or they’re stupid. They don’t use technical terms. They failed. They flunked. They’re not as smart.”

Jimerson, who is nationally recognized for his research on grade retention, has found that being held back can result in emotional distress, low self-esteem, poor peer relations and even alcohol and drug abuse.

The article noted positive steps taken by districts to give students the skills they lacked. Generally, they took extra time and money. One paid teachers a $5,000 stipend to become mentors and advocates for 12 to 18 students each. Another created a summer school program. Another broke the school into four smaller “academies” (It’s not clear whether that was more expensive than the one-school organization).

That’s pretty much it for the series. Everything else is detail, which you can read yourself if you’re interested. Let me end by listing three things that annoyed me in the article, followed by a moment of comic relief.

1. The article referred to “experts,” as if these “experts” have definitive answers. They don’t. If they’re conservative “experts,” they come to one set of conclusions based on the evidence. If they’re liberal “experts,” they come to a different set of conclusions, often based on the same evidence.
2. The article claimed, “Research shows . . .” No, educational research doesn’t “show” anything. It might indicate something. It might allow us to infer something. But there is no definitive research in education — never has been, never will be.
3. The article used that hated term, “throwing money” at education, as in, “they say that simply throwing more money at the problem won’t necessarily fix it.” Obviously “throwing money” won’t fix anything! Idiots!

Now for the comic relief. Some wacko by the name of Tom Horne (whoever that is) suggested that we can deal with this problem by holding back any eighth grader who hasn’t passed the AIMS test, then expand the program to all levels, so any students who don’t pass their grade level AIMS tests will be held back.

Where did they dig this guy up?

What? What did you say? He’s the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction? Oh my God! Please tell me you’re kidding!