One thing is clear from this spring: Countless students will start next school year with considerable learning loss. But for most districts, there鈥檚 one option for catching students up that isn鈥檛 on the table: holding them back a grade.
Superintendents in several big city school districts, including Baltimore and Boston, have said publicly that they won鈥檛 retain students due to their academic performance during the school closure period. And while most states either don鈥檛 have specific guidance around promotion for next year, or note that it鈥檚 a district decision, about a dozen have encouraged schools to promote students to the next grade.
鈥淭he spring was really a hold-harmless period for kids across the country, and specifically for big city school districts,鈥� said Raymond Hart, the director of research for the Council of the Great City Schools. 鈥淢ost are promoting students to the next grade level, with the understanding that beginning to teach grade level standards next year will involve going back and shoring up past learning.鈥�
Nationally, other school leaders seem to agree with this approach. In an EdWeek Research Center survey from early April, only 22 percent of district leaders said that students would be held back as a consequence for not completing work during school closures. A recent found that principals were also hesitant to require students to repeat a grade in response to the COVID crisis: 84 percent said they would not take this measure.
District leaders who have chosen to avoid retention cite evidence that it doesn鈥檛 improve outcomes, and argue that holding large groups of students back will disproportionately hurt students of color and students from low-income families.
鈥淭here鈥檚 just so much you can put on kids and teachers who are dealing with a lot of trauma right now,鈥� said Brenda Cassellius, the superintendent of Boston Public Schools.
鈥楬uge Equity Implications鈥�
In Boston, the district has built multi-tiered systems of supports into its remote learning plan, in attempts to minimize learning loss during the closures. About 15,000 of the district鈥檚 53,000 students require academic interventions during this period and have personalized success plans, which will be handed over to their next school year鈥檚 teacher, Cassellius said.
Students who have an incomplete in a credit-bearing course at the end of the school year will have the chance to finish over the summer, or make up the course through a credit recovery program next year.
鈥淭his is not about social promotion. This is about acceleration of students, and making sure that we鈥檙e addressing any learning loss,鈥� Cassellius said.
She and other district and state leaders who have advocated for promoting students next school year have advocated for acceleration over retention, pointing toward retention鈥檚 mixed research base.
A few studies have found that holding elementary students back and providing them with extra support鈥攕uch as interventions, summer school, or high-quality teachers鈥�can lead to academic gains. But in these cases, it鈥檚 hard to separate the potential benefits of these extra supports from the effect of retention itself, said Paco Martorell, an associate professor of education at the University of California, Davis.
Some of Martorell鈥檚 research, which examined retaining 5th graders in New York City, found that students who were held back did better on 6th and 7th grade assessments. 鈥淭here鈥檚 probably some academic benefits of being held back, but whether that persists in the long term, the evidence on that is pretty mixed,鈥� he said.
For older students, the outlook is worse. 鈥淭he studies that have the strongest research design tend to find that for late middle school, 7th to 8th graders 鈥� retention is not effective, and it probably has negative effects鈥攊ncreasing the likelihood of dropping out, not graduating from high school,鈥� Martorell said.
But he was quick to point out that COVID school closures are a context unlike what any of these researchers have studied.
鈥淚f there鈥檚 differential learning loss because of the move to online learning, that has huge equity implications whether or not you hold students back,鈥� Martorell said. The question shouldn鈥檛 be who to retain, he said, but what are schools and teachers doing to offset learning loss for everyone?
In an , Baltimore schools CEO Sonja Santelises described how holding students back next year could further inequities, asking readers to 鈥渃onsider how retention might play out in practice: for instance, the implications of using a single blunt assessment to decide who should be left back; the imperfect logic of focusing on low-income students, some of whom are performing above grade level; the role that bias might play in deciding who is left back; the role that parent advocacy might play in deciding who is advanced.
鈥淭he likely practical outcome of this extraordinarily expensive approach鈥�$15,000 per student at Maryland鈥檚 current spending rate鈥攚ill be to burden large groups of students already adversely affected by segregation with lowered expectations and even more segregation,鈥� she wrote.
鈥楪et Them Ready for the Next Level鈥�
Though many districts are discouraging broad retention plans, it鈥檚 hard to know yet exactly whether fewer students than usual will be held back next year nationwide.
A handful of states have suspended their 3rd grade reading laws, policies that prevent students from advancing to the next grade unless they can demonstrate grade-level proficiency. Many of these policies are tied to performance on state tests, which states have canceled in response to the pandemic.
In some states, though, these policies have been amended instead of waived. In South Carolina, for example, the state department of education has to make 3rd grade promotion decisions based on 鈥渁 collection of data points that may include formative assessments, teacher-made assessments, quarter grades earned, and prior parent notification and input鈥� in lieu of test scores.
Bree Dusseault, the practitioner-in-residence at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington Bothell, said that many schools in the adopted a do-no-harm approach to grading for these past few months鈥攕witching to a pass/fail system, for example, or saying that students鈥� grades could only be improved during this time period, not lowered.
鈥淲hat we don鈥檛 have insight into is exactly how and whether districts used grades to promote or retain students,鈥� she said.
In Baltimore, high school English/language arts teacher LaQuisha Hall is glad that students鈥� performance during this period won鈥檛 be used to make such decisions.
She was overwhelmed hearing about some of the challenges her students and their families have gone through this spring. 鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 have felt good for holding a student back for something that wasn鈥檛 their fault, or their choice,鈥� she said. She鈥檚 鈥渋n 100 percent agreement鈥� with Santelises鈥� decision, she said.
Having been forced to adapt quickly this spring, she feels ready to take on new challenges in differentiation and intervention in the fall. Doing so won鈥檛 be entirely 鈥渙ut of the norm,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e get students with deficits every year,鈥� Hall said. 鈥淥ur job as an educational leader is to pull them up and get them ready for the next level.鈥�
