Russ Walsh, literacy expert, wrote last year about the cruelty of flunking kids (retention) because of their performance on a reading test. He called it child abuse. Most of the kids who are not promoted are poor, suffering from burdens not of their making.

 

He was writing about Mississippi, which spends less on students than any other state, but he might as well have been writing about Ohio, Arizona, Florida, Nevada, or many other states that have adopted the so-called “third grade reading guarantee,” that puts into law the commandment that no child may be promoted to fourth grade unless he or she passes the reading test.

 

What should be done instead of retention? Walsh writes: Attention, not retention. 

 

He writes:

 

Individual tutoring, summer programs and early intervention programs, such as Reading Recovery, have been shown to be effective ways to provide struggling students with the attention needed to “catch-up.” For high-poverty areas, the money could also be better spent on early childhood programs, wrap around health programs and smaller class sizes.

 

Retaining students is a shortcut answer to a problem that actually works against our goals as educators. Educators would do better to attend to their struggling students with programmatic changes than with this mean spirited “hold them back” approach.

 

Let us attend to our struggling students, not condemn them to the false promise of improvement through grade retention.