Every fall, children enter and return to school. In any given class, teachers are likely to encounter students with a wide range of academic skills and abilities. Schools employ a variety of different placement methods to help make sure that students are assigned to appropriate classrooms and grade levels. The following article discusses school placement issues with special attention to tracking, ability grouping, social promotion, and grade retention. The article ends with ways parents can influence the school placement process.

Research on Student Placement Issues

Tracking and Ability Grouping. Although tracking and ability grouping are related, some experts argue that they are not exactly the same thing. Tracking is a school process of labeling and sorting students based on academic performance, often using standardized test scores to determine who is high performing and who is not. Once students are assigned to a certain track, it may be difficult for them to change tracks. On the other hand, the teacher typically does ability grouping or homogeneous grouping within the classroom. Ability grouping and tracking often function as one system since ability grouping is commonly practiced at the elementary school level and tracking is generally used in secondary schools. In both cases, the purpose of creating these groups is to make it easier for teachers to provide focused and individual help [6].

Supporters of tracking contend that grouping students based on their academic abilities makes it easier to get each child the type of help needed [8; 15]. However, research suggests that this strategy does not work. Although high-performing students do well when grouped together, students tracked to middle- and lower-performing groups actually fall further behind than they might have if they had stayed in a class with their better-performing classmates [1; 8; 14]. Rather than bring these students up to grade level, the lower academic standards and curriculum directed at already poor-performing students may actually keep them from improving [8].

Moreover, tracking also tends to place a disproportionately high number of racial and ethnic minority students in lower-performing groups. Both Braddock [3] and Oakes [10] found that Asian and white students are more likely to be placed in high-performing classes. At the same time, Latino, African American, and Native American students are more likely to be tracked to poor-performing groups and kept out of gifted programs, even if they have test scores that make them eligible to be placed in higher groups [3; 4; 8; 10]. Although some tracking supporters contend that the system would improve if lower ability groups were provided with the same level of financial support and quality of teachers allotted to gifted programs, critics argue that these kinds of additional support would not eliminate the racial inequalities imbedded in the system [6; 8].

Because students in lower tracks tend to fall behind, it is almost impossible for them to move up to more challenging courses in later grades [1; 4; 6; 8; 14]. As a result, these students are not as well prepared as their classmates are to go to college after high school since they have not been exposed to the classes that colleges and universities expect new students to have completed.

Social Promotion and Retention. Grade retention and social promotion are two different ways of approaching the same problem: what to do with students who do not seem ready to go on to the next grade level. Grade retention is the practice of holding students back to repeat a grade they did not successfully complete the first time [5; 9; 11]. Social promotion uses the opposite approach by allowing students to stay with their peer group even if they are performing poorly and have not mastered the work presented by the end of the school year [9].

Retention supporters argue that the academic performance of some students does improve after being held back [5; 7; 9]. However, most research indicates that the negative effects outweigh the few and often short-lived positive outcomes associated with grade retention [7; 9]. According to the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) [9], students who are held back often lose the academic gains made during the retention year within two or three years and end up performing at the same level as, or lower than, similar students who were not held back. In addition, students who are retained in elementary school are more likely to have emotional and academic problems during adolescence. These students often have low self-esteem, making them more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, drive drunk, smoke cigarettes, contemplate suicide, behave violently, and have sex during their teenage years. Moreover, there is some evidence that retention may actually be counterproductive because students who are held back are less likely to finish high school than those who are not held back. The more grades a student repeats, the greater is the likelihood that he or she will drop out. The negative effects of retention may extend beyond school. Compared to other students, retained students are more likely to experience unemployment, receive government aid, or end up in prison as adults. These effects are even more pronounced among students who are from low-income families, male, African American or Latino, or from single-parent homes since they are more likely to be considered for retention in the first place [9]. Although retention is not the sole cause of academic and social problems, retention appears to make things worse for many students.

Research findings also suggest that students retained one year do not necessarily improve their academic performance the next year, even though they are studying the same material that they studied before [7; 9; 11]. Being repeatedly exposed to the same information is not enough to improve a student's academic skills. In his review of retention research, Shane Jimerson [7] found that even researchers who support the use of retention concede that students who are held back tend to need additional assistance to improve their academic skills.

Contending that neither retention nor social promotion is effective, some researchers have proposed that schools adopt alternative approaches to the problem of helping underachieving students improve their academic performance, including the use of summer school and after-school programs [11; 12]. William Romey [13] even suggests that schools eliminate the use of grade levels altogether.

School Placement and Parents' Participation

Currently, there is no law that gives parents the right to determine where their children are placed in schools [2]. Even so, parents can influence their children's teacher and classroom assignments. Here are some suggestions parents can use to help facilitate appropriate placement for their children:

* Find out how placement and gifted education decisions are made at the child's school.

* If more than one teacher is available for the child's next grade level, talk with the child's current teacher and school principal to help identify which teacher is most appropriate.

* Encourage the school to offer opportunities for parents to meet and talk with teachers for the child's next grade level, perhaps through the local parent-teacher organization.

* Learn more about what students are expected to know to be successful at each grade level.

* Monitor academic performance throughout the school year by checking progress on homework assignments, class projects, etc.

* Use time outside of school to help students work on academic skills.

* Find out about programs for skill improvement are available at the school and in the community, e.g., tutoring, homework clubs.

In most cases, schools do not have the personnel or resources to fully meet the needs of every child. Although parent involvement will not resolve placement issues, it can help to ensure that the child makes the most of the resources available at school and in the community.

For More Information

Ascher, Carol. (1992). Successful detracking in middle and senior high schools. ERIC/CUE Digest [Online]. Available: http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed351426.html (ERIC Document No. ED351426)

Banks, Ron, & Robertson, Anne S. (2002). Parents' rights and the education of children. Parent News [Online], 8(1). Available: http://npin.org/pnews/2002/pnew102/feat102.html

Burnett, Gary. (1995). Alternatives to ability grouping: Still unanswered questions. ERIC/CUE Digest [Online]. Available: http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed390947.html (ERIC Document No. ED390947)

Kelly, Karen. (1999). Retention vs. social promotion: Schools search for alternatives. Harvard Educational Letter Research Online. Available: http://www.edletter.org/past/issues/1999-jf/retention.shtml

Kozol, Jonathan. (1991). Savage inequalities: Children in America's schools. New York: Crown. (ERIC Document No. ED356035)

Mills, Rebecca. (1998). Grouping students for instruction in middle schools. ERIC Digest [Online]. Available: http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed419631.html (ERIC Document No. ED419631)

Oakes, Jeannie, & Wells, Amy Stuart. (1998). Detracking for high student achievement. Educational Leadership, 55(6), 38-41. (ERIC Journal No. EJ560969)

Slavin, Robert E. (1993). Ability grouping in the middle grades: Achievement effects and alternatives. Elementary School Journal, 93(5), 535-552. (ERIC Journal No. EJ464542)

Smith-Maddox, Renee, & Wheelock, Anne. (1995). Untracking and students' futures: Closing the gap between aspirations and expectations. Phi Delta Kappan, 77(3), 222-228. (ERIC Journal No. EJ514723)

Sources

[1] Barko, Naomi. (1996). Tracking: Does it hurt or help kids? Parents, 71(1), 125-129.

[2] Belter, Catherine A. (1997). Parental rights legislation: A bad idea. Educational Leadership, 55(3), 84-86.

[3] Braddock, Jomills H., II. (1990). Tracking: Implications for student race-ethnic subgroups (Report No. 1). Baltimore, MD: Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students. (ERIC Document No. ED325600)

[4] Frazier, Herb. (1997). Derailing student tracking. Black Issues in Higher Education, 13(25), 12-13. (ERIC Journal No. EJ539596)

[5] Grant, Jim, & Richardson, Irv. (1999). When your students need one more year. High School Magazine, 7(4), 8-13. (ERIC Journal No. EJ599018)

[6] Haury, David L., & Milbourne, Linda A. (1999). Should students be tracked in math or science? ERIC Digest [Online]. Available: http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed433217.html (ERIC Document No. ED433217)

[7] Jimerson, Shane R. (2001). Meta-analysis of grade retention research: Implications for practice in the 21st century. School Psychology Review, 30(3), 420-437.

[8] Mallery, James L., & Mallery, Janet G. (1999). The American legacy of ability grouping: Tracking reconsidered. Multicultural Education, 7(1), 13-15. (ERIC Journal No. EJ594390)

[9] National Association of School Psychologists (NASP). (1998). Position statement on student grade retention and social promotion [Online]. Available: http://www.nasponline.org/information/pospaper_graderetent.html

[10] Oakes, Jeannie. (1995). Two cities' tracking and within-school segregation. Teachers College Record, 96(4), 681-690.

[11] Robertson, Anne S. (1997). When retention is recommended, what should parents do? ERIC Digest [Online]. Available: http://npin.org/library/2000/n00452/n00452.html (ERIC Document No. ED408102)

[12] Rogalski, Anne, & Jacoby, Rebecca. (2000). Giving failing students extra help: An alternative to social promotion or retention. Schools in the Middle, 9(9), 22-25.

[13] Romey, William D. (2000). A note on social promotion. Phi Delta Kappan, 81(8), 632.

[14] Slavin, Robert E. (1995). Detracking and its detractors: Flawed evidence, flawed values. Phi Delta Kappan, 77(3), 220-221. (ERIC Journal No. EJ514722)

[15] Vann, Allan S. (1999). The pros and cons of math ability grouping. Principal, 78(3), 58-59.