Example Persuasive Essay - Retention

Are your lowest-performing students suddenly asking for lists of their missing work? Are the students who cut your class repeatedly miraculously on-time and ready to work? It must be that time of year again—the time of year teachers have to turn in their final F’s and U’s for the semester. For some students, the F’s they receive will just mean that they have to go to summer school. For others, however, it means that they will have to repeat the grade they’re in. Retention is a punishment for failure that was given up for many years, but is now making a comeback. And while it may be temporarily satisfying for us teachers to see a consequence given to students who willfully refuse to meet the requirements for grade level promotion, ultimately that consequence causes no meaningful improvement in student achievement. Retention fails both students and schools for a variety of reasons.

The first and most compelling reason not to use retention as a consequence for school failure is that research has shown time and time again that retaining a student greatly increases the likelihood that the student will drop out. Proponents of retention may believe that those students would drop out anyway, but the truth is that in several studies, students who were promoted in spite of failing in key subjects stayed in school longer and had a higher chance of graduating than students who were retained, even when the student was retained as far back as elementary school.

Another reason not to retain students is that the social stigma and emotional and psychological suffering can scar a student for life. Maybe you haven’t had a student for the second year in a row, but I have. Far from wanting to do better, most students who are retained actually do worse. It seems to me that the anger and humiliation that the student suffers on a daily basis makes it impossible for them to concentrate on doing better the second time around. The students I’ve seen repeat grades became hardened class-cutters and basically dropped out while they were still in 7th grade, no matter how much extra support or encouragement I gave them. While the cause for continuing failure and drop-out is hard to prove, the resentment and alienation caused by retention is likely to be a deterrent to success rather than a motivation towards it.

Finally, the most important reason not to retain students is that their failure reflects not just their own unwillingness and inability to do well in school but the school system’s failure to adequately address their needs as students. Why do students fail? Students fail for a very wide variety of emotional, psychological, social, and academic reasons. If we retain them and don’t provide any extra services for those students, how can we expect any different result? While it is too much to ask for schools to take the place of families and counteract the problems of poverty, we as educators do need to be able to recognize students who need different learning environments and provide them. At the very least, no child should have to go back into the exact same school with the exact same teachers when they are retained.

We all know how exasperating it is to have a student fail in spite of our best efforts to help them. With some students, we may even be so frustrated that, on an emotional level, it can be satisfying to know that they are going to be punished at last for their inappropriate school behavior. In the long run, however, we must look back at the reasons we became educators to begin with. We know that all students can learn and that public education should serve all students equally. For both practical and ethical reasons, retention is not the answer to student failure.