IMPLICIT CRITERIA USED TO DETERMINE PROMOTION FOR
NORMAL AND RETARDED STUDENTS
TIMOTHY M. FLY”
Southern
Illinois University
Since the positive promotion of mental health is one of the major goals of
education,
it
is surprising that many schools continue to utilize retention in grade
as
a
remedial procedure. This procedure has been demonstrated to have
a
negative
effect on the child’s social acceptance, personality adjustment, and his attitude
toward peers, teachers, and school in general (Funk,
1969).
There also are indica-
tions that the retained child frequently stalls academically at the point of failure.
In the studies reviewed, Funk
(1969)
found that
20
to
40%
of retained students did
poorer work in the repeated grade. The average repeater, moreover, learned no
more in
2
years than
a
student of similar ability who was promoted learned in
1
year. Despite these findings, approximately one million
(1967-1968
school year)
children failed to meet teachers’ explicit criteria for promotion and
as
a
result were
retained at their present grade level.
PROBLEM
The explicit criterion commonly given by teachers
as
a
determinant of pro-
motion is mastery of subject matter.
It
was hypothesized that the criterion actually
used may be more closely related to the student’s personal and social behaviors in
the classroom than to his mastery of subject matter. Accordingly, the present
study was designed to determine whether the implicit criteria used by teachers in
making decisions concerning promotion are based on the student’s personal and
social adjustment or on his mastery of subject matter.
METHOD
To identify the implicit criteria used by the classroom teacher to determine
promotion,
61
retarded elementary students (Stanford Binet IQs below
84)
and
61
randomly selected students (normal) were rated by their regular class teachers
(N
=
114).
Their mean chronological ages were
9.8
and
10.6
respectively, and their
mean grade placements were
3.3
and
4.6.
This study was conducted in
a
school
district where retention in grade
was
an accepted educational procedure. The
retarded students were selected from
a
list
of
students who were awaiting placement
in the part-time special education program.
Retarded students were included in the study on the premise that they would
be unable to satisfy the teachers’ explicit promotion criteria
of
mastery of subject
matter at their grade level, and hence the retarded student’s mastery
of
subject
matter cannot be used
as
a criterion by the teacher to determine promotion. Ac-
cordingly,
if
the same behaviors that differentiate between normal promoted and
retained students also differentiate between retarded promoted and retained stu-
dents,
it
would provide support for the premise that these behaviors are the
teachers’ implicit criteria
of
promotion.
The implicit criteria on which teachers based their decisions concerning
pro-
motion were determined through their use
of
the Elementary School Adjustment