Teachers Unsure About Flunking : Some Students Benefit, but Others Suffer From Lowered Self-Esteem

The letter last June from Sun Valley Junior High School to Miguel Hernandez’s parents, informing them that their son would have to repeat seventh grade didn’t exactly come as a surprise.

All year, Miguel’s teachers and parents had warned him that if he didn’t shape up and do his work, he would flunk. And all year, Miguel hadn’t listened.

“I was lazy,” said Miguel, 14. “I went to class, but I didn’t do anything else. They told me I would flunk, but I didn’t pay any attention to them.”

The letter changed that. Faced with watching his friends go on to eighth grade without him and having to live with the humiliation he said he felt, Miguel suddenly got a new attitude. He signed up for summer school and attended math and computer classes, even when other students with similar problems were encouraging him to leave school. He pulled his grades up to B’s and C’s. And when school began in September, Miguel entered eighth grade with his friends, grateful to have gotten a second chance.

“I was embarrassed about it,” he said about the possibility of retention. “I don’t know anyone who wants that to happen.”

Miguel’s story of sudden motivation isn’t the most commonly heard one when educators discuss retention. In most cases, the debate over the pros and cons of holding a child back have traditionally focused on a few key issues: Does retaining a child give him a chance to catch up with his peers and increase the likelihood of his succeeding in school? Or does it do the opposite, instilling in him a sense of low self-esteem that sets him up for later failure?

Faced with new research that suggests the latter may be the case, educators, teachers and parents are beginning to more closely examine retention. For example:

* A recent study of 70,000 students in four school districts found that students who are forced to repeat a grade are 20% more likely to drop out of high school than their peers.

* Research at the University of Colorado found that students who spend two years in kindergarten because they failed kindergarten readiness tests fared no better in first grade.

* One study on teacher attitudes toward retention showed that among those surveyed, the majority of teachers exaggerated the benefits of retention and held beliefs not necessarily borne out by statistics.

“It used to be that if a child didn’t get what was being taught, we just held him back,” said Carol Fox, curriculum consultant with the Los Angeles County Office of Education. “Now we’re finding that retention has all sorts of problems.

“Even at a very young age,” she added, “it can show up later in low self-esteem. It’s a very serious move that leaves its mark.”

In June, 1987, the last year for which figures were available, 29,786 out of 586,590 students in kindergarten through 12th grade were retained districtwide, according to the Los Angeles Unified School District’s office of research and evaluation. That number reflected no significant change from 1983, when 27,168 out of 549,198 students were retained.

Although the decision to hold a child back must be approved by the parents, Fox said, many teachers overestimate the benefits of retention and may convey that at decision-making time.

Citing the study on teacher attitudes, she said, “They believed that retention early on tended to prevent it in later grades, and also that it took students from the bottom of one class and put them at the top of another. But neither has ever been substantiated by research.”

Research or no research, some education experts believe retention is a positive option in some cases.

“Retention at the elementary school level, if it’s not done as punishment for failure to achieve but instead as a chance for something different, can pay off and be valuable,” said David Bower, administrator of the student guidance services division for the LAUSD. “The problem comes later on in junior and senior high school, when it almost becomes a set-up for failure.”

Some parents apparently share that opinion. One school administrator recalled a case two years ago in which the parents of twin girls in fourth grade asked that one of the girls be retained. Although the principal advised against it, the parents felt that the girl’s lagging academic skills, which were two years below grade level, warranted the move. The school finally agreed, and both girls have reportedly adjusted well.

Fox, however, questions such a move. “Especially considering the close relationship most twins have, it’s bound to have an effect on her self-esteem later on,” she said.

Sarah Jane Moody, a sixth-grade teacher at West Vernon Elementary School in Los Angeles, sees the issue from a slightly different perspective: “I think it lowers a child’s self-esteem a lot more to be in a class and not be able to read what the other children are reading or to be able to answer a simple question. To me, that is worse.”

Moody had three children in her fifth-grade classroom last year whom she recommended for retention. When she was given the sixth-grade teaching assignment, she later decided to bring the three children into that classroom instead. The combination of her knowledge of their weak areas and hard work on their part, she said, will give them another chance to bring their skills up to grade level.

On the flip side are students who are not held back but who perhaps should be. “You have to understand that there is a battle of ages going on. The student is getting older,” said Linda Markham, an eighth-grade teacher at Sun Valley Junior High School. “If a student has a number of fails, some are passed on not because of academic merit, but because of their age. You can’t have a 16-year-old in seventh grade.”

The issue of retention has come to the attention of more and more parents in recent years, especially in the face of a growing national trend to give children standardized tests to determine whether they are ready for kindergarten or first grade. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Assn. for the Education of Young Children, it is not uncommon for 20% of young children to be held back from entering kindergarten, put in to a remedial or developmental program or be held back from entering first grade.

“This happens despite the fact that research shows retention has potential long-term effects on children’s self-esteem,” said Asa Hilliard, an Atlanta, Ga., psychologist and professor at Georgia State University. “Significantly, research does not show that retention has a positive effect on children’s later academic achievement.”

Proponents of the developmental programs vehemently disagree. Instead of putting socially or academically ill-prepared children in school just because they are legally old enough to be there, they say, the transitional programs allow them to mature and enter school a year later with stronger skills and a positive attitude.

Although developmental or transitional programs for kindergarten-age children have been adopted by about 25% of the Los Angeles County’s 74 districts with elementary schools, Fox said, they are not endorsed by the state Department of Education. In a recently published report, she said, a departmental task force said districts should concentrate instead on creating “integrated educational programs” that are “age and individual appropriate.”

“The thinking until now has been that the curriculum was OK, but that the child wasn’t ready for it. Now that’s changing,” Fox said. “Schools and teachers are beginning to think that maybe it’s not so much that the child isn’t right for the program, but that the program isn’t right for the child. Still, we don’t have a magic wand to make the change overnight.”

Contrary to some assumptions, the greatest number of children who are retained in elementary school do not have identified learning disabilities, said student guidance administrator Bower. Instead, he said, they are children “who are not achieving up to their potential, for as many reasons as exist.”

As with Miguel Hernandez, who simply chose not to do his work, teachers say it isn’t always so much that Johnny can’t read, as much as Johnny won’t read.

In a nationwide poll, conducted by the Institute for Motivational Development in Chicago, teachers said that 40% of students don’t work to capability. Adding to the problem, parents are often either disinterested or too busy working to take part in the educational needs of their children; kids may have an emotionally difficult situation at home; and those children who have fallen behind in a few classes may become overwhelmed, believing there is nothing they can do to catch up.

Although the debate about retention is likely to rage for some time, teachers and educators do appear to agree on one factor: the importance of parental involvement.

“It’s amazing how often a parent will be contacted about a student who is failing, and the parent will express tremendous concern and then not do a thing,” said sixth-grade teacher Moody, who is trying to devise creative ways to bring the children up to grade level.

“To help these kids outside the classroom, I told their parents I would be at school each morning at 7:30 a.m. for homework help. So far this year,” she said, “only one student has showed up once.”