Former California Governor Pete Wilson's "social promotion" package, requiring districts to adopt new promotion policies based on state-mandated test results, is misguided. All retention or promotion decisions should be supported by multiple forms of evidence. Test scores should be buttressed by other information, such as grades and…

This booklet examines ways to promote student success in a California standards-based system. It reviews the history of social promotion and retention in the United States and suggests why it is time to move beyond the "either/or" mindset. The booklet suggests that neither social promotion nor retention solves the basic problem of…

With passage of several recent laws, the California State legislature intended to end social promotion, replacing it with a system of prevention, intervention, and retention. The "strategic schooling" approach depends on three elements: targets (both students and content), continuous feedback via assessments, and organizational and…

Over the past 10 years, kindergarten classes have escalated their academic demands in order to prepare children to begin first grade. In tandem with curricular changes, many parents have elected to "hold out" their children from first grade for an additional year, and increasingly, schools are using kindergarten retention in response to…

These six issues examine education in the inner cities. Titles include: "Pathways to School/Community/Family Partnership Results: Measures of Success and Student Learning" (e.g., promoting community partnerships and active learning through federal policy and linking child development knowledge with partnership evaluation); "Emerging…