Pros And Cons Of Grade Retention

If students are rewarded for quality schoolwork, grades may initially improve. They may show more excitement. However, in the article “Why You Shouldn’t Pay Children for Grades” by Amy Mccready, it is found that the enhanced grades deteriorate along with the excitement for the payment. Most children simply lose interest in the reward. It is better to just let youth accomplish

Alfie Kohn discussed multiple fabulous points in his article, “Degrading to De-Grading”. The author suggests more effective ways to assess students’ progress other than numerical or letter grades. Kohn goes into detail about why our current grading system is flawed. Grades can cause students to lose interest in learning which causes them to stop taking challenges. If students are not engaged and interested than they are not retaining the information they are being taught. The grading system can also cause students to develop unhealthy competition with one another for instance, “I got a better grade than you!”. Indeed, grades are a wonderful concept, but they tend to be more hurtful than helpful. In some cases, grades can have positive effects on students. For example, setting goals for various assignments, or receiving help where they are struggling. Though, there are alternatives that could make positive changes in the system.

Ms. Diehl says, “Less bad behavior and better grades for some kids”.(“Should Schools Offer More Electives?”) Students will keep their grades up because if they don't, they will be kicked off of their team or activity. Others say that, it raises their grades if they are not apart of any activities. The students just have to be able to stay focused on the right things. My evidence supports my claim because it tell you the causes and effects of your grades. The evidence supports my overall claim because, this backs up my reasons. This is important because,these kids need to know the importance of keeping our grades up.

Historically, letter grades have served as a tool to rate educational intelligence. By looking at the progression of a student’s grades over time, people are able to determine whether or not the students are developing skills in certain areas. Using a one letter grade to determine progress has received many critiques as a common system used in America’s education. Critics claim letter grades cause students motivation and creativity to decrease because grades shift students focus from learning the material to obtaining a good grade.

In “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation”, Alfie Kohn explores the phenomenon behind grade inflation. Whether it is complaints or just the general idea that such an undesired occurrence has routinely taken place, Kohn certainly explores them all. He begins with addressing that the issue has not just transpired, but has been in existence over time as many have complained periodically. As Kohn notes on page 261, grade inflation is recognized as a poor occurrence, yet Kohn reveals the struggle as “truly substantive issues surrounding grades and motivation have been obscured or ignored.” Why is this so? Kohn goes on to explore the issue through some evidence and research, but finds that while grades have become higher more recently than before, that still does not prove inflation exists behind the rise in grades (261). By this Kohn reveals a trend to the reader with the facts, or lackthereof, behind grade inflation.

    Grade inflation, the belief that students are receiving grades that they haven’t worked for and therefore don’t deserve. But what’s so wrong about grade inflation? When learning about this subject we also open the doors to learning about the multitude of other problems plaguing our educational system that could use our attention much more than grade inflation does. Through grade inflation we’re able to understand problems often forgotten about and looked over.

During the summer an equivalent of one month of overall learning is lost. By the end of sixth-grade students that experienced learning loss are an average of two years behind their peers. One of the educational topics under discussion addresses whether or not students should attend school year round with only a month off during the summer. Year-round schooling is beneficial because students retain more information, have frequent breaks to recharge, and will advance quicker.

Many researchers have been interested and have conducted different experiments on whether retention causes positive or negative effects. One group of college professors followed two groups of students in Florida: the first group barely passed the reading test and got to continue to fourth grade, the second group barely missed the mark and had to repeat third grade. The researchers continued to watch these students for the following eight years; they saw that the major effects started to fade, but after a few years the kids that were retained had fewer remedial classes and higher GPS’s when they got to high school (Kamenetz, 2017). The common belief is when a kid is retained, there is an increased risk of them falling behind in higher grades

How could holding back a student in a grade longer than average help them? Would not it just make them feel as if they were slower than others? Which could make them develop into something they're not.Academic Achievement of kids who are retained for advancing to the next grades poorer that, that of peers who are promoted. ( http://www.greatschools.org/special-education/health/659-repeating-a-grade.gs?page=all ) Deciding to hold back a student for not successfully completing their grade could result in many problems, such as : low self - esteem, hinderance in the child's development, and the child could become an issue.

For most students struggling to keep up parents is wondering whether or not to retain their kindergarteners. Scientist would need to determine why is it that children are struggling to keep up?

Are grades important? Discuss whether grades are necessary in order to keep students on track with learning.

The effects of grade skipping has been the focus of many researchers. Some want to find out if students who skip a grade are more likely to have advanced math skills, and if that would result in them going on to make contributions to the STEM field. Others want to know if and how it affects other aspects of the student, such as their language skills. In these studies, researchers investigate these questions to determine the both the long-term and short-term effects of grade skipping.

A student can be excluded from their peer groups because they have a bad grade. Being left out can make a student not want to improve academically. If they get bad grades others will see them as a poor student and will expect them to do poor in life. The process most schools use to evaluate student performance is grade point average and class rank. The academic recognition programs that exist in the United States are driven by a student’s grade point average and class rank. Those measures serve as the primary method in establishing student recognition. If this ranking is not the sole factor in the recognition program, it is always included in the student’s assessment. The school culture recognizes individuals that are in the top one-third of the school’s class rank

Annually, it is estimated that roughly 15% of students are retained, representing approximately 2.4 million children (Jimerson, 2001; Mattison, 2000). In general, children who repeat a grade are 30% more likely to drop out of school as compared to their promoted peers and the retention trend is increasing, up approximately 12% from 1980 to 1992 (Owings & Magliaro, 1998). Retained students have an approximately 60% chance of dropping out of school by the 12th grade and those students who have been retained twice increase their chance to 90% (Parker, 2001). Rumberger (1995) identified grade retention as the single most powerful predictor of dropping out. It is estimated that 40% of the total number of repeaters are from the lowest SES brackets compared to only 8.5% from the highest SES groups (Owings & Magliaro, 1998). Research by Meisels (1993) discovered that more than two-thirds of all retentions occur before fourth grade. These discouraging statistics also come at an enormous expense; grade retention costs approximately 10 billion dollars per year (Natale, 1991).

Social promotion and retention are used for various reasons. Retention is implemented when students have not met the general requirements to begin the next grade. The question that will be addressed is how do social promotion and retention differ? The overall meaning of both will be addressed to give the reader a better understanding of the two. Social promotion is the practice of promoting a student to the next grade level even if the minimum academic factors have not been satisfied. Retention is the approach that is most widely practiced. This is the retention of a grade to reinforce academics. The pros and cons, static’s, and drop out rates will be discussed. All of these