Social Promotion Vs Retention
"President Clinton (1998, 1999) called for an end to social promotion, which many educational professionals interpret as a directive to retain low achieving students."
With all the discussion about public education reform, there remains a wholly self-defeating practice continuing to be engaged in by the majority of parties to this debate. Even though they have the political and social capital to make themselves heard, they posit solutions that focus on goals without addressing the difficult foundational issues that remain unresolved and need to be addressed before attempting to propose a comprehension solution. Leaders in public education reform just ignore these issues and move on. In so doing they plant the seeds of assured failure in whatever model they propose, whether it be district, charter, pilot, small schools, or teacher centered models.
Dr. Shane R. Jimerson of the University of California at Santa Barbara, seems to have spent a considerable portion of his professional life studying the companion issues of grade retention and social promotion to see if either approach is better than the other in helping to assure ultimate student success. After a cursory view of the data he ha