lf-worth, then to assume that the child will catch up in later grades (McCormick 27)." Administrators and teachers do not want to impair students self esteem by holding them back. Holding children back is thought to create embarrassment and low self worth in students. Children are often made to think less of themselves when made to repeat a grade, should we however combat this with telling a student that no matter their work or effort they will be promoted? How will this increase self esteem? Mrs. Crew, a fifth grade teacher, does not let one child leave her class due to social promotion, she says "This is not about being punitive with kids, ...this is about caring so much about children that you will not let them fail" (McCormick 27). This is the way to produce high self-esteem in students. Let them know their success is cared about. There are many reasons to justify Social Promotion but none of them really make sense in the long run."We are giving educators a pass for lack of performance --and we are putting kids on the street with pieces of paper that are essentially worthless..." (Toch 59). Each year young adults graduate from high school, and have no skills to maintain a job. The remedial training required by companies for these graduates in subjects like Math and English are outrageous. " More than twenty percent of all businesses provide remedial training for high-school graduates, at an annual cost of billions" (Galston 35). Doing something about the failure ahead of time is more reasonable than socially promoting students until graduation. "In the heat of the promotion versus non-promotion debate, the dropout rate is often not considered" (Mitzel 468). Social promotion causes a high drop out rate. This theory lies behind Social Promotion, students that are held back more than once then they are most likely to drop out all together. However this has been proven false. If students are promoted with out learning the material the...
