Georgia needs to address the issue of social promotion by utilizing these strategies, although retention may appear to be an easy alternative. When these methods are implemented, Georgia should see long-term success. The DOE can then envision a day in which all students will meet grade level standards and graduate because they have truly learned the material and met standards for each grade level. Faith in Georgia’s public education system will be restored. Georgia’s graduates will be highly qualified young adults that are more prepared than ever for higher education or careers. A No Social Promotion policy AND a No Retention policy, together, are the best policies. The day when social promotion is stopped completely, retention is minimized, and student achievement is maximized will be a bright day across the great state of Georgia.

As a result of parental concerns and the recent conference on social promotion, the DOE is approaching changes and implementation of policies with caution. The DOE is also working with the State Board of Education, local boards, and members of the Georgia General Assembly to find the best way to implement such policies. Many legislators in Georgia, mostly Democrats, are concerned that these new policies will cause large numbers of primarily poor and minority students to be retained and thus believe them to be discriminatory. A U.S. Department of Education report, justifying the concerns of these legislators, finds that “retention disproportionately affects minority and economically disadvantaged students” (“Taking Responsibility: Executive Summary” 1). Nearly all other research conducted on the topic of social promotion and retention confirms the concerns of these Democratic legislators in that larger proportions of poor, minority, and male students are retained when students are required to meet standards. A study by the Southern Regional Education Board finds that “social promotion is unfair to students and detrimental to society [because] these students typically fall further and further behind their classmates and ultimately leave school without the basic skills and knowledge every adult needs to be a productive member of society” (Denton 1). Because these socially promoted students fall further behind each year, they are continually the ones who are not able to meet standards. In essence, social promotion is setting these students up for failure, both in school and in life, by allowing them to proceed. A study on the effects on social promotion in Chicago Public Schools produced similar findings: “Sixth graders who were socially promoted in 1995 were falling behind their counterparts” (“Ending Social Promotion” 35). In response to these findings, Chicago responded by implementing tougher standards and bringing an end to social promotion. It was the first large school district to implement such a policy. Following Chicago’s lead, school systems across the country, including many in Georgia, have enacted policies ending social promotion. Many systems are seeing great rewards from these new policies while some are seeing only mixed results.

Although social promotions have been occurring throughout the twentieth century, retention is no new practice either. Shepard and Smith found that “in the nineteenth century, [. . .] grade retention was widely practiced, affecting more than 70 per cent of all students” (5). Although it is not as widespread today, largely because of social promotion, it is still practiced on a large scale. In recent efforts to end social promotion, the retention rate has gone back up. The National Research Council, a panel charted by Congress, “estimates that at least 15 percent of children nationwide repeat a grade between ages 6 and 17” (Viadero 2). Clearly, too many children are still repeating grades. If so many students are being socially promoted, yet so many students are still being retained, where does t

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