Where is Lake Wobegon, anyway? The controversy surrounding social promotion

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 80, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 195-198

  Rothstein, Richard ^a  

^a ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE   (United States)

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EID: 0040065528     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. Quoted in Arthur Reynolds, Judy Temple, and Ann McCoy, "Grade Retention Doesn't Work," Education Week, 17 September 1997, p. 36.
2. Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., "Don't Retreat on School Standards," New York Times, 30 December 1995.
3. Sandra Feldman, "Passing on Failure: The Problem of Social Promotion in Schools," address to the National Press Club, Washington, D.C., 9 September 1997.
4. Policies that increase the number of retentions make it even more difficult to trust data on student achievement. An easy way to make it appear that student achievement is improving, without any change in school effectiveness, is to prevent the slowest learners from moving to the next grade; that grade's test scores will suddenly shoot up. The effect of these retained students on the scores of the earlier grade in which they are now placed will vary and will be hard to isolate. They could depress the scores or raise them -all without any change in pedagogical effectiveness. And these effects will vary from district to district, depending on retention policies. Indeed, to the extent that retention policies now vary, this is another factor making data on student achievement difficult to interpret.
5. Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980 (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 173-74.
6. Leonard P. Ayres, "The Money Cost of the Repeater," The Psychological Clinic, vol. 3, 1909, p. 56.
7. Ibid., pp. 51, 57.
8. Hilda Volkmor and Isabel Noble, "Retardation as Indicated by One Hundred City School Reports," The Psychological Clinic, vol. 8, 1914, p. 78, Table III.
9. Ibid., p. 81.
10. David L. Angus, Jeffrey E. Mirel, and Maris A. Vinovskis, "Historical Development of Age-Stratification in Schooling," Teachers College Record, Winter 1988, pp. 228-29.
11. Lloyd H. Elliott, "Promote All - In the Public Schools?," Educational Forum, November 1948, p. 69.
12. Angus, Mirel, and Vinovskis, p. 229.
13. "Philadelphia Schools Solve the Promotion Problem," Elementary School Journal, vol. 48, 1948, p. 532; and Angus, Mirel, and Vinovskis, p. 230.
14. "Philadelphia Schools Solve the Promotion Problem," Elementary School Journal, vol. 48, 1948, p. 532; and Angus, Mirel, and Vinovskis, p. 230.
15. Roger T. Lennon and Blythe C. Mitchell, "Trends in Age-Grade Relationships: A Thirty-Five Year Review," School and Society, 15 October 1955, p. 124.
16. Ibid., p. 125.
17. Bernard Iddings Bell, "Our Schools - Their Four Grievous Faults," in C. Winfield Scott and Clyde M. Hill, eds., Public Education Under Criticism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1954), p. 62.
18. Mrs. W. T. Wood, "The Teaching of Fundamentals," in C. Winfield Scott and Clyde M. Hill, eds., Public Education Under Criticism (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1954), p. 107.