Is Social Promotion a Good Thing?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder examines the argument that social promotion protects students from the social harm of retention, while pointing out the academic costs.
Key Takeaways
- Social promotion has real costs - Moving students forward without the skills they need creates compounding academic gaps
- Retention has costs too - Holding students back can damage self-esteem and peer relationships
- Neither extreme is the answer - The real solution is early intervention to prevent students from falling so far behind that both options are bad
Transcript
Should we pass kids along to the next grade if they haven't learned what they need to?
I'm actually a fan of social promotion.
I think it is the right thing to do to move a kid on to the next grade level, even if they haven't learned everything they need to learn.
Because the consequences of being separated from your age peers, of being held back, and basically removed permanently from all of your friends and classmates in school.
I think those consequences are just too catastrophic, and it's not the right step to get a student back on track.
And I think what we can do is provide additional support.
In middle school and high school, we can provide double-depth classes like double reading, double math.
We can provide tutoring and specialist support.
And I think when it comes to high school, the place where we have to hold the line in high school is you don't get credit for the class unless you pass it.
Like social promotion kind of ends in high school with the credit system.
And I think that's a pretty good way to do it because at that point, you know, students are starting to take different classes depending on, you know, their plans.
Anyway, it's not like you lose all your friends if you fail Algebra 1 in ninth grade or something like that.
Like I think this is a solvable problem.
at that point.
And the point of accountability needs to be, if you don't pass the class the first time, you have to take it again.
But I continue to hear people talk negatively about social promotion as if it's a lie or as if it's like a failure.
to move a kid on to the next grade.
Like, they need to move on to the next grade because they've gotten a year older during that grade, just like everybody else has.
And we don't want to be in this situation where we have kids who are six feet tall in fifth grade and, you know, driving to middle school and things like that.
Like, kids need to be socially promoted because that is how school works.
And if you talk to people who were held back, like, very rarely will they say, like, unless it was in kindergarten or preschool or something, very rarely will people say, hey, yeah, that was great.
I'm really glad I was held back because the second time through sixth grade, I learned everything I needed to.
It doesn't really offer a different approach.
So why would we expect different results the same time in a grade?
So I'm a fan of social promotion.
Let me know what you think.