pass or fail Archives

May 3, 2018

Pass or Fail: The Challenges of Multi-Age Classrooms

In this multi-part series, I provide a dissection of the phenomenon of retention and social promotion. Also, I describe the many different methods that would improve student instruction in classrooms and eliminate the need for retention and social promotion if combined effectively.

While reading this series, periodically ask yourself this question: Why are educators, parents and the American public complicit in a practice that does demonstrable harm to children and the competitive future of the country?

Applying a multi-age concept to classrooms, instead of the more rigid age-based system we use today, could solve a lot of problems — but what are the obstacles?

Here’s a story from Sarah, a teacher in the Midwest. Sarah’s school is in an urban setting. Her school had been chosen to participate in a pilot program to bring multi-age classrooms to the school district. Sarah found herself teaching a mixed classroom of students from first through fourth grades. She ended up with a ratio of ten boys to four girls, which she noted was a significant error and led to difficulties.

Sarah had received a total of just one day of training in preparation for the multi-age classroom, and she displayed a high level of anxiety about the class. Sarah noted that there were no structures for planning and staff development in place that would have allowed her to bounce ideas off colleagues or receive mentoring. The administration expected her to be able to deal with the change on her own.

Though the classroom had been allotted $2000 for materials and was told to boost the level of computer-assisted learning, the money did not arrive until after the school year had started, leaving Sarah floundering to fulfill her mandate. Once the computers did arrive, there were other problems involved with implementing the technology. The school had contracted with a software company from another state that essentially guaranteed growth in math and reading skills … as long as the classroom met certain standards. One of these standards required that students spend half an hour a day at the computer; if they missed a session, Sarah was expected to supervise a make-up session.

Sarah was not the only teacher in difficulty at the school—the problems were widespread, and dissatisfaction among the teachers was rampant. Sarah, as it turned out, ended up being one of the few who succeeded in getting a handle on the material. Some teachers went on strike, largely due to the multi-age pilot program, and several resigned.

As the example above demonstrates, implementing multi-age classrooms requires more than just directives from the administration or district-level authorities. Teachers must be given adequate preparation, and if new technologies are introduced, this should happen well in advance. However, studies have shown that, if implemented correctly, multi-age classrooms offer significant advantages.

It is well documented that multi-age groupings increase academic achievement levels. Although Slaton implied that the forced assignments for both teachers and students in multi-age classrooms could lead to negative academic outcomes, and attributed misunderstanding or lack of understanding about multi-age education to the inconsistent definition of multi-age education, many more studies identify the significant benefits of the multi-age program.

One of the issues with attempting to identify the benefits of study is, as Lloyd and others have suggested, due to the wide range of ways multi-age groupings are put in place. The diversity of multi-age program development and implementation makes it difficult for researchers to generalize about the academic impact of multi-age education. Nevertheless, the academic, social, and emotional benefits are enormous.

Educators have been attracted by the benefits of the multi-age classroom for some time. This is at least one of the reasons for the considerable diversity of the multi-age model: that so many organizations, groups, and educators have applied the model one way or another.

What if we all came together to form a collective, expert opinion on how to run these classrooms? If we combined our knowledge, how could our students benefit?

September 6, 2017

Pass or Fail: Social Promotion Abolishment — A Case Study

If a student hasn’t meet the material-based learning criteria, they face one of two options: retention or social promotion. So, what happens when a school suddenly decides to ditch social promotion practices? Read on to see how this real-world scenario plays out:

Long Beach Preparatory Academy in the Long Beach school district in Southern California had been hurriedly cobbled together from prefab structures in about five months. It was in a difficult neighborhood, and the school district had recently decided that social promotion, which moves students up based on age rather than test scores, had to go. Unlike other schools in the area, Long Beach Prep had plenty of money, sieved from budget reserves.

They had manageable classrooms of twenty kids or fewer. They had ninety-minute classes, rather than the standard forty. The district would spend $6,300 per pupil to educate the students. (Note that this is just shy of the national average – California has had longstanding educational budget woes). The principal, Miguel Lopes, even had the funds to hire a dean of discipline to keep the kids in line.

Adrian Chavez, his hair bleached blond from long afternoons at the shore, had been told by a teacher that he was “wasting taxpayers’ money”—and it could be argued that he was. He and many other students were getting terrible grades. His classmate Brandon Perkins, an inherently bright student, had turned in a dire report card at the end of the previous year and, according to his mother, had “the attitude to go with it.” Clearly, the school needed to pull itself together.

The district-level abolishment of social promotion, which in the case of Long Beach Prep meant that any eighth-grader with two F’s on his or her report card would be held back, had a dramatic effect on the school. Four hundred and twenty-five students flunked, possibly the largest group in any school in recent Californian history. By the end of the year, only 292 students remained at the school.

But in the meantime, something extraordinary happened. Of those remaining students, just a handful failed to pass. Adrian Chavez was finally free to dream about becoming a boat captain and was engaging with his teachers for the first time. Brandon Perkins’ mother was astonished by his “complete turnaround.”

In the case of Long Beach Prep, cutting back on social promotion clearly created better results for the students who remained. However, what about the hundreds of kids who were expelled or sent elsewhere? Is abolishing social promotion the best way to go for everyone in the community?

Social promotion, of course, is the option that allows otherwise “failing” children to move on to the next grade level. They move on even though they have not mastered everything required, and they may even have other identified issues with skills-based learning. Social promotion, however, also allows that students may lack the expected knowledge and skills to function well at the promoted grade level. It allows their promotion regardless, always in spite of a common and reasonable concern that this approach places already struggling students at risk of future failure, rather than addressing their academic or personal needs at the moment.

Retention takes the opposite approach and tends to be the harsher of the two options. It is usually the most difficult option for the student to deal with on a psychological, social, and academic level.

Retention puts a child back a year, determining that they should remain in a specific age-grade level if they have not mastered the appropriate knowledge or skills to graduate to the next level. It focuses on the academics at hand and is less likely to take into account the feelings or potential social shortfalls of holding a child back. The positive angle is that it allows students to take additional time to master materials that they have struggled with.

The question of whether social promotion or retention is best, or whether one is more appropriate than the other, continues to be central to the educational challenges of this country. In most school districts, the more overt practices of social promotion appear to be in decline. However, although retention is emerging as a preferred policy, many districts still rely heavily on social promotion.

Do you agree with the move toward retention over social promotion within American schools?

July 15, 2017

Pass or Fail: A Spotlight on Social Promotion Responsibility

Would you really want your child to move on to the next grade level if he or she hadn’t mastered the skills and concepts necessary in their current grade level? Perhaps social promotion makes sense from a social perspective, but how does this set a student up for academic success?

The Clinton Administration had strong objections to social promotion in the late 1990s. In a 1999 report that continues to influence views on the subject, Taking Responsibility for Ending Social Promotion: A Guide for Educators and State and Local Leaders, social promotion was tied not only to the child’s inability to perform at the next grade level but also to the clear negative effects of social promotion on a child’s future. The key points of the report emphasized that students allowed to progress to the next grade through promotion, rather than achievement, would be ill-prepared to enter college or the workforce.

Although there are some who continue to tout social promotion as a strategy, even the majority of supporters now rarely endorse it as a preferable, standalone practice for students who struggle to achieve. Rather, they take an oppositional stance, offering social promotion as an alternate or better choice for children than retention.

One obvious problem with this “better than the alternative” mindset is that it clearly emphasizes some of the less than savory reasons for social promotion. As was the case in the past, social promotion becomes the practice of choice when the numbers don’t look good; when a proposed retention policy requires too many children being held back. Districts may fear the political and economic ramifications of a high retention rate.

While supporters of social promotion believed that retention undermines the social and psychological well-being of students, today there is also a focus on the achievement-related repercussions of retention. Many believe that retaining children will not result in academic gains, particularly if a child experiences the same curriculum and instructional methodologies as in the previous year. Some students appear to gain more from exposure to new material in the next grade, and others find new experiences motivating. Even so, the more positive impacts of social promotion are difficult to track, primarily because schools rarely distinguish between regular and social promotion.

Critics of social promotion believe the practice deceives both children and their parents. Children may conclude that their efforts in the learning environment do not matter when they can pass to the next grade regardless of their current grade performance. Observing their children progressing from grade to grade, parents may fall under the mistaken impression that their child will be prepared for college, or to enter the workforce upon graduation.

On the flip side, it’s worth noting that a series of supports specifically impact the success of retention. These include support among parents and educators; processes that identify students at risk for retention and provide high-quality interventions and support; systems that set criteria for promotion that balance local and state measures; strategies that build the capacity of teachers to support students at risk for retention; and systems that monitor the effects of implementation of the policy.

There’s a fair chance that teachers end up having to provide too much attention to students who are not ready for coursework at a certain grade level. Although the effort may have the best intentions, the process can interfere with the teacher’s ability to focus on the other students who are ready to learn at that grade level.

Retention and social promotion policies, have a long and complicated history in the United States. Most of the traditional solutions to the challenges of education have proven problematic, and their results have been limited. Social promotion and retention divide opinion. Both policies have their critics and supporters.

Put yourself in the position of a student, teacher, or parent and imagine facing one of these options. Which strikes you as the better solution? Which strikes you as better for future academic success? Which is likely to help the student feel greater confidence about his or her potential to make progress?