Retention has anyone requested it?

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Bumping again to get rid of trash on the board

Hi, Justme.

I’d suggest you do a topic search on retention. Its a hot topic.

In general, the consensus seems to be that retention doesn’t work very well, especially after 1st or 2nd grade. The child gets bored and self esteem suffers. That being said, I’d look hard at it if my child was less mature than his classmates.

I insisted that my 12 year old, entering 7th grade, multiple LD, daughter be retained at 3rd grade. The school was opposed because the kid was in fact achieving Bs and C’s, albeit with heroic effort. At age eight she was getting perhaps six hours of sleep a night, and while she has always been a remarkably resilient child, she was dying from the neck up. It was an excellent decision. She found that she was now average in terms of reading, below average but in the lower end of the classroom range in terms of writing, and close to the top in terms of math. She felt normal for the first time since she started Kindergarten, and this did wonders for her self-esteem. She is now handling a very challenging preparatory school with only moderate difficulty, and no accomodations. She reads at a normal pace with grade level material, but is still a slow reader when reading above grade material, which is the only kind assigned by her obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive English teacher. She is still a crummy speller and a disorganized writer, and above-mentioned English teacher thinks nothing of failing a 5 page, beautifully written, lovingly edited paper because it messed up on MLA formatting in the reference section.) She will be in Algebra I this year and is looking gifted in math although math was a black hole during the first round of third grade. Retaining her was absolutely the right thing to do. HOWEVER, (1) my child was young and small for grade, having made the Kindergarten cutoff by 4 days, and being tenth percentile for height for age. Since most of the kids with summer birthdays had been socially redshirted a year before entering Kindergarten, this meant that she was 4 inches shorter than the next shortest kid, and more than two years younger than the oldest kids in her class. (2) We timed this with a move out of state in order to avoid social consequences, and to ensure a completely different curriculum. Had we not moved out of state, we would have definitely moved her to a different school. (3) We used the time we gained to remediate like gangbusters.

My younger child (aged 5) and reading and doing math comfortably on the end first grade level, just successfully completed half-day, public school, Kindergarten. I am recycling her in all-day Kindergarten at her sister’s preparatory school because she is (1) small - 30th percentile height for age, (2) young; she missed their Kindergarten cutoff last year by 12 days, and most of the kids with summer birthdays in that school got held out a year (3) socially immature, shy and easily overwhelmed.

My neighbors held back their third grade son and say it was the best decision they ever made. He made the honor roll last marking period after being required to attend summer school since K. However, his basic issue seems to be immaturity—they had extensive testing done and there was no evidence of LD or ADHD.

We are having our 10 year old son repeat fourth grade. He has multiple LDs and ADD-inattentive as well (neurologist says ADD, therapists have said processing). We are transferring him to the parochial school his siblings attend which is ahead of our public school. So it is like 4.5. He could not make the jump, given that he is not a strong student in public. Our motives are three fold. We are looking to have him consolidate his skills, especially math at this point. He totally doesn’t get fractions, for example. His writing structure improved immen. last year but his grammar and spelling are second grade level. We also want to avoid our large public middle school and allow him to be at the same school as his siblings.

My son’s skills, however, are not as far behind as your child’s. I know other parents with kids in your situation you homeschooled for a year or two. They addressed underlying processing problems and caught them up.

Beth

The people who help their child back did many other things as well to make sure they would be successful. Schools are in the habit of leaving kids back as a panacea for all kinds of learning failures. The research does not support this practice.

You can find the research if you do a search on the ERIC data base on grade retention.

It is generally considered a bad idea to retain a child, but if you have to, before 3rd grade is the best time. One of the few instances where it would be beneficial to retain a child is due to immaturity. The only benefit is that it buys him a year to grow up and catch up, developmentally. It is a rare situation where grade retention is worth the trouble it causes. I’m sure there are exceptions, but I’d play the odds. Here are some good sites, some old, some new, but all reputable. I did not just post sites against retention. To be honest I could not find a reputable site that recommends grade retention. I am not biased, I actually did retain my son in K and have no regrets whatsoever, but his was one of the few good reasons to do it. Make sure yours is also one of the few good reasons, there aren’t very many;
http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/legal_legislative/grade_retention.html#Retention

http://www.nasponline.org/information/pospaper_graderetent.html

http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/012299sou-promote.html

http://npin.org/library/pre1998/n00348/n00348.html

I’ll bet thousands of us have considered it. I certainly remember thinking if my child could just get a chance to ‘catch up’ she’d be okay. My child is very short, a May birthday -so we could have gotten away with it during a move. But the reality is without serious attention to remediating the child’s skills, there is no catch up-they will still be behind but a year older to boot.
There is quite a bit of literature regarding the social stigma of retention. Are you considering moving locales? schools? Moving seems to make it a lot easier.
We choose to provide serious 4-5 times a week remediation over the summer to work on skills. We got very lucky with our choice of tutor-very skilled and very caring person. My child made such gains that she was able to cope the first year and was on grade level after the second summer. There are still issues (aren’t there always) with processing speed, spelling, organization, etc but she now reads for pleasure.
Its a tough choice-really depends on the kid, and very much the learning situation.
I would have considered retention if it had put my child into the services she required and wasn’t getting.

What does your child’s teachers recommend? What does your child think about the matter?

As you can tell by the great advice you’ve been getting here, there is no ONE answer to your question. You have to do what you feel is best for your child.

I didn’t realize the reprecussions of retention, thanks for the studies and history. The school has not actually recommended retention, but I was told it was up to me. Your information has given me much to consider, I thought this would help him but I was worried he was too old. They have given me until August 1st to decide.

Do you feel that your child is getting the help he/she needs?
Reading in between the lines, I’m guessing that either you are not sure or you don’t think the services are there.
It is up to us, as parents, to see that our children’s needs are met. It involves educating ourselves on what those needs are and how to remediate them. Then light the fire under the school. We choose to get private help rather than wait.

For us retention was a short-lived, romantic notion of our very-able-but-ld child getting a breather and taking off with the gifts she does have. It was a dream. She is doing okay, better than I hoped for in the dark days of 4th grade, but it has been hard work for her and really staying on top of what she needs for us.

If retention fits into an overall plan of services then consider it but if it is in lieu of services-ran away fast. I would consider retention, for instance, if it allowed my child to be in a school where great services were being provided and the next school was lousy.

I think you need to assess the overall plan for your child before considering retention.