Retention Wars: Blaming Children
THIRD GRADE PUNISHMENT LAWS
In the recent film, Rise Above the Mark, Linda Darling Hammond said,
The problem we have with testing in this country today is that…we’re using the wrong kinds of tests, and…we’re using the tests in the wrong kinds of ways.
More than a dozen states, including Indiana punish third grade children — 8 and 9 year olds — for low reading achievement by forcing them to repeat third grade.Retention in grade doesn’t work…and we have known it for decades.
In the past, parents, teachers, and administrators used to make the decision to retain a student in his current grade. Now it’s state legislatures, governors, and departments of education. We have allowed the wrong people — politicians and policy makers — to determine the academic placement of our children using the wrong kinds of tests in the wrong kinds of ways.
21ST CENTURY DUNCE CAP
Recent research in retention in grade mirrors past research from the last century. We do know that intense intervention helps…but, as a nation, we’re not willing to spend the money to provide it for our children. We know that lowered poverty rates help, but, as a nation, we’re not willing to face the fact that we have failed to reduce poverty in our country, and in fact, it continues to grow.
Yet state after state continues to force school systems to hold children back in third grade causing unnecessary academic and emotional damage by labeling students as failures. This is no more effective in helping children learn than was the 19th century dunce cap.
Oklahoma partially repealed their third grade punishment law last May. They are still doing the wrong thing, requiring children to be punished for low reading achievement, but at least now, they are letting parents and local educators have some input into the decision.
Of course some legislators, who claim to be for “local control” during campaign season, were not happy to yield to actual local control…
[The] bill shifts promotion-retention decisions about third-graders who score unsatisfactory on the Oklahoma Core Curriculum Test to teachers and parents.The existing law required students not covered by certain exemptions to be retained.…Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa said “…the decision that a child needs to be held back won’t come down to a single high-stakes test. It allows for a series of assessments throughout the school year and gives our local schools, professional educators and parents greater input.”
Notice that in Oklahoma the argument wasn’t against retention, but was for local control. The change to the law requires local folks, parents and teachers, to decide whether or not to retain a child instead of the no-excuses policy of retaining everyone who can’t read by third grade.
TEACHERS NEED TO LEARN THE RESEARCH
One problem with retention in grade is that it is supported by a large number of educators.
Many teachers don’t believe the research and instead rely on “anecdotal evidence.” An elementary teacher in a K-5 school building, for example, might retain a child and assume that all is well because the child does better the second year…and perhaps the following year as well. Unfortunately, the gains are Retention Wars: Blaming Children | Live Long and Prosper: