Social Promotion

        Education is one of the basic tools and opportunities in life needed to achieve an 

academic goal. This opportunity is a privilege for the taking. Do your best, work hard and reap

 the rewards.   Thus, schools have not admitted to adopting a practice that is called social

 promotion. This practiced has been around in the United State for over 20 years (King). Social

 promotion is a practice used by schools that promotes students not meeting requirements for the

 next grade level to advance to that next grade level (Social Promotion). 

Should social promotion be practiced in the school system?

       According to a recent report in Education Week, experts believe that by adopting social

 promotion practices, this would be beneficial to the child’s social and intellectual well-being, not

 to mention being among their peers chronologically. Without the practice of promoting social

 promotion, teachers feel that high failure rates would reflect poorly on the school and school

 personnel. Teachers promote students because of the pressures they receive from the principals

 and parents, whether the student is ready or not because they feel that holding back is ineffective

 to the students and, that there is no other alternative that would help the student (education.com).

 Perhaps, by using social promotion, this is the easiest and quickest way to help struggling

 students.  This practice of social promotion is only benefitting the schools.

          Considering the reasons mentioned above, how is this, a benefit to our students, and what

 are the repercussions? First of all social promotion has a negative effect on student improvement,

 which can have a long term impact on a student’s belief of preparedness to the next grade level.

 Secondly, it gives a struggling student a false sense of skills mastered. This in turn can send

 messages to other students that their hard work and diligence does not matter. Third teachers

 have to reconfigure lessons plans, and do differentiating strategies to accommodate the

 struggling student therefore, becoming frustrated with the expectation of students to earn good

 grades (education.com).

         Also, research shows another repercussion that affects our students’ self- confidence, is

 that social promotion does and will not help in the advancement of the students’ academic

 standards. By promoting a student, that is not ready to go into the next grade level, it hinders

 their capability of catching up with their peers because they have lost a full year of academic

 studies. This can also cause higher dropout rates later in years because they do not have what it

 takes to take tests to get better grades and scores. (“Is Social Promotion Crippling our Childrens

 Future”). Their test taking and basic skills are lacking in order to succeed. Westchester Institutes

 for Human Research, found that future problems can arise. Colleges have to use extra money to

 help students succeed because they are not up to potential with their grades. Businesses are also 

using extra money to invest in training employees who are not sufficiently prepared for the skills 

that should have been achieved in school. The world today will end up dealing with people who

 are not ready in skills needed to be able to function in today’s society (“Is Social Promotion

 Crippling our Childrens Future”). This feeling of inadequacy can be very frustrating, 

embarrassing and hard to bear. The thought of all our future students who are struggling and are

 passed on to the next grade unprepared for the sake of the school’s reputation and grade is

 appalling

.

         While retention would be a simple solution to social promotion practices, this too has not

 proven to be the most successful alternative to help struggling students. Some suggestions

 offered up by the Winchester Institute of Human Services Research are:

1.      To have clear and precise standards that is required by students, to accomplish.

2.      Curriculum given to students grade by grade accounted for.

3.      For teachers to perform multiple assessments according to the need of the student in order for 

      each child to be accommodated.

4.     Workshops offered to the teacher for different teaching strategies and learning styles to 

      accommodate students.

5.      Smaller class sizes along with block scheduling to help give more one on one attention to the learning process.

6.      Having resource services available to help struggling students.

             Finally, the research also suggests that the strongest most beneficial tool that we can give

 our children is exposure to some form of education at an early age in the basic skills that will be

 taught in our school system and help relieve some of the struggles students might face (“ Is

 Social Promotion Crippling our Childrens Future”).

           In order to help with the social promotion practice of struggling students in the school

 system, we first must identify the problem and be willing to help revise the current strategy

 which in turn might help find a solution. In a lighter note research seems to point out that our

 schools are willing to try any new approach in keeping our students from failing and using this

 social promotion practice. With this in mind there is hope for the future generations that will be

 graduating through our school system.

                                                                    Works Citied

J. Aldridge/R. Goldman—Pearson Allyn Bacon Prentice Hall. “Prevalence of Social Promotion”) updated Jul 20. 2010

          http://www.education.com/reference/article/social-promotion-education/

Chen, Grace. “Is Social Promotion Crippling Our Childrens Future the debate.” Publicschool review,

           N.p., n.d. Web.. http://www.publicshoolsreview.com>. 21 Apr. 2014

King, Patricia. “Politics of Promotion.” Newsweek 15 June 1998: 27. Academic OneFile Web.

 "Social Promotion." Education . N.p., n.d. Web. . <http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/social-

            promotion/>.