What’s the Prevailing Policy and What Needs to be Done?

Adelman, H., & Taylor, L. (2008, January 1). Grade Retention: What’s the Prevailing Policy and What Needs to be Done? UCLA School Mental Health Project.

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This article investigates the multiple debates surrounding the overall question “What should be done with students not meeting expected achievement standards?” It briefly describes the current state of our education system as a result of the No Child Left Behind Act. Adelman and Taylor explicitly describe their contempt for the fact that people still use retention as a practice of intervention for struggling students because it has been consistently shown to be ineffective and harmful to students academic and emotion achievement.  Additionally, Adelman and Taylor assert that social promotion is just as harmful to our students. Instead, if proposing alternatives Adelman and Taylor demand the need for interventions that does not wait for failure but is proactive and helps identify struggling student and provides the appropriate support before the student gets to a point where retention enters the discussion. However, for this to happen they believe a restructuring of policy and frameworks is necessary. They make it clear that without an attempt at a large scale systematic change that shifts prevailing policy we as a nation will continue our practice of retention and social promotion.