Hot Topics in Education: Social Promotion by F.MacKinnon

Like many first year teachers I was shocked at the way the educational system operates here in New York City. While most of my friends and siblings thought I might be disturbed by funding issues, safety, discipline, workload, etc., I was not. Those were issues I expected to deal with as a teacher in the Bronx. What I had not thought about was what happens at the end of the year? I am a 7th grade English teacher at a phase out school in the South Bronx. “D” is my oldest student. She is nearly 17 years old, and still in my 7th grade glass. Throughout the year D gave me more grief than any of the other students. Sure, she is a behavior problem in my class, but that is not her only problem. I can count on one hand the amount of assignments she has completed for my class. She reads and writes at a fourth grade level. She would probably benefit greatly from smaller class sizes, but she is nowhere close to where she needs to be in order to pass the 7th grade. Her reading level, test scores, and lack of effort resulted in her failing my class all four quarters. In fact, she only passed two classes the entire year, physical education.
After a truly trying year with D I expected her to be the only 17 year old in 7th grade next year, but to my surprise on the last day of school her report card indicated that she had passed the 7th grade! What did D have to say about this?
“Yo, Miss Mack, I ain’t do nothin’ all year and I still pass 7th!”
Why did this happen? Because of social promotion, which is described as the process of allowing a student to move forward or be promoted to the next grade despite bad grades or test scores so that they can continue on with their peers (Thomas, 2000). As a result of social promotion D will move forward, even though she is unprepared for the tasks she will have in the 8th grade. She will have the same, possibly worse, behavior problems and a new teacher who will spend a whole year trying to adjust to these behavior issues, as all of her past teachers have done (Johnson et al, 89). She will most likely spend that year doing nothing once again, because the material will be so beyond her it will be hard for her to even attempt to catch up…and at the end of the year the cycle will repeat, and she will go to 9th grade with a 4th-5th grade reading level, and the knowledge that she doesn’t have to anything and she will still get by.
On the surface it seems quite silly to promote a student just because, but upon further research I wondered what other options we, as educators, have? If D were to be held back in 7th grade again, she would likely encounter the same problems she had this year. Her class size would remain the same, and she would not get enough personal attention. Her age and maturity level are already advanced beyond the students she was with this year, and with her attention seeking tendencies she would have the chance to impress a whole new group of younger, impressionable students.
So what is the answer? According to Thompson (335) “We need extraordinary prevention and intervention strategies to serve students and not bureaucracies of the existing educational system.” What that means is that the problem won’t be solved overnight. We need a complete redesign in the policies by which our schools are governed. Somewhere along the lines we’ve lost sight of our focus- the learner. We need to make education accessible for the learner so that we can do our job to teach them and they can do their job, which is to learn. What does that mean for right now though? Do we hold D back in hope that something miraculous happens within her that forces her to do better next year? Or do we promote her so that her self-esteem is saved, but damaged by the fact that she cannot read well enough to complete 8th grade tasks she is given? Ideally, D would have another option, an option where we stop looking at her as a lazy student with a bad attitude, and start trying to understand why this is happening so that we can do our job to teach her.

References
Johnson, J.A., Musial, D., Hall, G.E., & Gollnick, D.M. (2008). Foundations of American education: Perspectives on education in a changing world. Pearson Education Inc: Boston, MA.

The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 69, No. 4, The School Reform Movement and the Education of African American Youth: A Retrospective Update (Autumn, 2000), pp. 323-337

Slavin, R.E. (2004). Education research can and must address "what works" questions. Educational Researcher. Vol. 33, No. 1, 27-28 .