Retention at the Third Grade Level

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how among the many reform efforts currently undertaken to improve education in the United States is a trend toward holding students back from advancing to the next grade until they have mastered certain skills and how the idea of social promotion has fallen out of favor; instead, the focus is on retention. It proposes a study to see whether if holding children at the third-grade level back from advancing to the next grade has any influence on the children's self-esteem, particularly if they are socially promoted, or if they are advanced to the next grade, but at the very bottom of their class and whether there any differences in self-esteem levels between all of these groups.

Outline
The Problem
Introduction
Subsidiary Questions
Review of Relevant Literature
Hypothesis
The Method Sample
Research Design and Instruments

From the Paper:

"According to a classic 1980 study on childhood stress, the only two things that children fear more than losing their parents or going blind is having to repeat a grade. This is one of the most traumatic events for young children, and it has far-reaching consequences. The most common of these consequences are that the child is stigmatized, rarely catches up with classmates, and often drops out of school (Perry, 1999, Darling-Hammond, 1998). Behavioral problems are also often the result. In comparison to those who have been socially promoted, children who have been retained do much worse in the long run, even if they are at the same basic level to begin with. Apparently these children simply give up on themselves as learners, feeling like failures and assuming that it is impossible for them to succeed academically (Darling-Hammond, 1998)."

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