School Information System

Social Promotion & Summer School

The WSJ Editorial page, in a wide ranging piece, discussed social promotion and the utility of summer school:

That's because the get-tough approach - flunking students - isn't realistic: Repeating a grade does more harm than good. Such students are much more likely to cause behavior problems, skip school and eventually drop out.

And simply advancing students to the next level - called "social promotion" - with no extra help only ensures the children will fall behind even faster the next year. Wisconsin law now prohibits social promotion out of fourth and eighth grades.

With both social promotion and grade retention discredited as phony strategies that harm, not help, student achievement, summer school starts to look like a good investme