From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
Recently, Marion Brady offered thought-provoking insights on educational policy that deserve serious consideration, something that many Democrat and Republican politicians are loathe to do.
Learning Disabilities: The Tragedy of Retention
From Reading & Other Learning Disabilities
A Blog by Dr. Gary G. Brannigan and Dr. Howard Margolis
At this time of year, teachers and parents think about retaining children with academic problems. Those who support retention argue that these children will benefit from repeating a grade. Retention will give the student an opportunity to review the material, or mature socially and emotionally. It will motivate the student to do better, to avoid future retention. Educators, politicians and parents who support “standards” and attack “social promotion” (automatically advancing students from grade to grade, despite poor achievement) vigorously support retention. They argue that retention sends students the clear message that they must master what was taught to advance to the next grade. In one sense, retention advocates have been very successful—almost 50% of students are retained by grade nine. In another sense they have failed—these children do not improve academically. Moreover, retention is extraordinarily costly. It hurts children and wastes untold dollars.
Retention rarely helps children with reading disabilities become competent readers. Keeping them in the same kind of situation in which they struggled is unlikely to produce better results. Giving them another year to master what they failed to master—without major changes in situations and services and instruction—is unlikely to work, as it has rarely worked in the past. It may well harm them.
The latest issue of the Reading & Writing Quarterly: Overcoming Learning Difficulties sheds light on the issue. In summarizing the information about Chicago’s aggressive policy of retaining students, Mary Abbott and her colleagues noted that many children may have been harmed by retention:
