The paper researches the practice of social promotion, where students who fail due to a lack of comprehension of grade level material are promoted along with their classmates who passed. Student and parent interviews, student surveys, and data from students' graduation records are used to determine that social promotion does not improve the students' education, instead students who are socially promoted are more likely to dropout of high school, less likely to graduate high school on time or at all, and the alternative practices are needed if students are to be successful and graduate high school.