Psychologv in rhr Schools Volume 21, Ocroher, 1984

FIRST-GRADE PROMOTIONAL PRACTICES: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST'S ROLE:

A SYMPOSIUM The following three papers were presented at a symposium chaired by Gilbert R . Credler of the University of South Carolina in modification at the meetings of the American Psychological Association in Anaheim, California, in August, 1983,

REPEATING THE FIRST GRADE: HOW THE DECISION IS MADE'

JONATHAN SANDOVAL University of California, Davis

Although there has been a great deal of debate about whether or not children should repeat a grade in school, a more interesting question is which children are retained. This study addresses the question of what kind of children were retained in the first grade as compared to the norm, and as compared to a group of promoted children who were classroom peers yet who educators in the middle of the year considered to be possible nonpromotion candidates. Teachers from 6 school districts identified in March 146 children as candidates to repeat the first grade. By September, 84 had been retained, 62 promoted. In the Spring before the decision was made, we tested all children with a variety of measures of immaturity: intellectual, social, emotional, and physical. Promoted candidates differed from nonpromoted first graders with respect to academic achievement, cognitive development, and adaptation to school. All can- didates, both promoted and retained, scored below average in reading achievement, visual-motor integration, and adaptation, but scored in the average range with respect to IQ, height and weight, and social adjustment. A cluster analysis on cases for the retained children further revealed three subgroups of retained children: One group had low scores on all measures of immaturity, especially self-concept; a second group had high or medium scores on all measures; and a third group had low math skills, but good social skills. These results may be interpreted as indicating that some children are appropriately retained and some are not.

A great deal of research has been done on the efficacy of grade level retention (Jackson, 1975). Because the results of these studies do not lead to a clear conclusion, it may be useful to focus on a separate but allied question of who should be retained. Is there a group of children, however small, who might perform better in school as a result of retention rather than of promotion? Needless to say, answering this question is an am- bitious task.

One place to start is to examine who is considered for this intervention. There is not a great deal of empirical evidence on the point, although there is no shortage of opinion. Lieberman (1980), for example, offers a typical list of child characteristics to consider when retaining a child: small stature, temporary slow learners, socially immature, neurological immaturity, children with low self-concept (where that self-concept may be enhanced), children immature in assuming responsibility for their own learning, young children, and so on. The central concept in his and others' (e.g., Light, 1977) advice is to retain immature children.

The purpose of this study is to learn which children are naturally selected by the system to repeat the first grade: (a) How may repeating children be characterized with

Reprint requests should be sent to Jonathan Sandoval, Dept. of Education, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA 95616.

'Research supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health P H S 28765.

457

458 Jonathan Sandoval

respect to immaturity? (b) How do they compare, with respect to measures of im- maturity, to classroom peers and to other children who were candidates to repeat in the winter of the school year but who were, after consideration, promoted? (c) What sub- groups or types exist among those retained?

METHOD Subjects

Six school districts from the Sacramento-Solano County area of Northern Califor- nia, including the Catholic School Department, participated in the project. From the six cooperating districts, 37 elementary schools and, because some schools had more than one first grade, 53 first-grade teachers took part. Subjects were comprised of 146 children, out of a possible 180 children, who were considered for retention in those classrooms. No consistent characteristics could be detected in those not participating.

Of the participating children, 84 (57.5%) were retained and 62 (42.5%) were promoted. The retention decision was contingent upon three factors: (a) the opinion of the classroom teacher; (b) the discretion of the school principal; and (c) in the majority of the cases, parental consent. With few exceptions, children were not retained when parents strongly opposed the retention decision.

Sixty percent of the subjects were boys, fewer than would be expected on the basis of previous research. Children ranged in age from 6-4 to 7-8, with an average age of 6-9 at the time of the first data collection. Approximately 25% were black or Hispanic. The children are generally representative of the first-grade population in California; no strong cultural, religious, racial, or sexual bias was operating in the selection of candidates for retention.

Measures

Pupil attributes. We obtained the following direct measures of pupil functioning with the hope of quantifying various aspects of immaturity: The Vocabulary and Block Design subtests of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Revised (Wechsler, 1974), three Piaget-derived tests of cognitive development (Tuddenham, 1970), subtests from the California Achievement Test (Tiegs 8c Clark, 1977), the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test (Woodcock, 1973), and the Key Math Diagnostic Arithmetic Test (Con- nolly, Nachtman, & Pritchett, 1976), the Developmental Test of Visual Motor Integra- tion (VMI) (Beery, (1 967), and the McDaniel-Piers Young Children’s Self-concept Scale (McDaniel, 1973). We also measured height and weight. We asked teachers to complete the Pupil Behavior Rating Scale (PBRS), which measures classroom adapta- tion, interpersonal adjustment, and intrapersonal adjustment (Lambert, Bower, & Hart- sough, 1979). Procedure

In March and April of 1979, cooperating teachers identified children in their classrooms they believed would benefit from repeating the first grade. The possibility of retention was then discussed with the parents during routine conferences. At this time, parents were informed of the research project and permission was requested to release their name to a member of the research staff.

Subjects were tested individually in the schools during the Spring of 1979. The testing battery was approximately two hours long and was completed in one or two sessions. Academic and nonacademic assessment measures were alternated to maximize attentional and motivational factors.

Repeating the First Grade 459

RESULTS Description of Those Retained and Those Promoted

Table 1 presents the summary statistics of the two groups remaining in the project who had complete data on the various pupil measures. When multivariate analysis of variance is applied to the statistics of Table 1, the following differences are significant at pl .05 : Letter Names, Word Recognition, Reading Comprehension, Key Mathematics, Linear and Circular Order, and the teacher rating of adaptation on the PBRS. The two groups differed with respect to achievement, cognitive development (as measured by Linear and Circular Order), and adaptation to school.

Table I Summary Statistics for Retained and Promoted Children

Retained Promoted N = 6 7 N = 4 7

x SD x SD

Age Letter Names* Word Recognition* Reading Comprehension* Mathematics* Visual-Motor Integration Height Weight Self-concept Linear and Circular Order* Conservation of Area Water Level WISC-R Block Design WISC-R Vocabulary PBRS Classroom Adaptation* PBRS Interpersonal Relations PBRS Intrapersonal Relations

82.78 29.61 23.27

5.54 39.37 11.30 47.32 50. I9 26.88

2.13 .85

3.79 9.40 8.93 7.95 4.39 5.52

4.10

6.80 19.35 3.61 5.91 1.54 2.04 6.38 1.22

.83 1.20 1.95 2.6 I 3.00 1.55 1.55 1.95

82.66 32.02 30. I 5 7.17

42.89 11.5 47.43 51.63 21.14

2.77 1.13 3.68 9.53 9.64 7.05 4.33 5 .00

3.14 2.34

16.15 3.25 5.89 1.68 2.64 9.31 5.90

.8 1

1.31 1.83 2.90 2.33 I .81

1.67 1.74

*p<.05

Table 2 repeats some of the same information for the two groups and compares the groups to the “average” first-grade student at the year’s end. It contains the means and standard deviations for the Reading and VMI scores in converted (nonraw) score units and lists some normative data for other measures. From the table it is clear that both the retained and promoted candidates were below average in word recognition and reading comprehension, but were not uniformly so, as reflected by the large standard deviation. They were a year below age on the VMI. Both groups were of average height and weight and were in the average range on the IQ measures, although a bit below the mean. The groups were less well adjusted as rated by the PBRS, particularly on the adaptation measure where retained groups were more than one standard deviation from the mean (high score = maladjustment). Test-defined problem areas for the children who were candidates to repeat were academic skills, visual motor integration, and adaptation to classroom demands.

460 Jonathan Sandoval

Table 2 Means and Standard Deviations of Retained and Promoted First-Grade Children in NonRaw Score Form and Normative Data on Measures Used

Norm Retained Promoted First Grade

x SD x SD x SD

Letter Names Percentile 59.75 22.60 69.02 14.64 50 Word Recognition Percentile 29.30 26.74 39.91 24.35 50 Reading Comprehension Percentile 14.30 18.14 21.57 22.14 50

Visual-Motor Integration Age Equivalent 5.77 .65 5.86 .85 6.89* .3 I

Height 47.32 2.04 47.43 2.64 47.48** 2.15

Weight 50.19 6.38 51.63 9.31 49.72'. 7.68 Block Design 9.40 2.61 9.53 2.90 10.00 2.00

Vocabulary 8.93 3.00 9.64 2.33 10.00 2.00 Classroom Adaptation 7.95 1.55 7.05 1.81 4.84 2.66 Interpersonal Behavior 4.39 1.55 4.33 1.67 3.66 1.92

Intrapersonal Behavior Adjustment 5.52 1.95 5.00 1.74 4.12 2.12

*Sample average chronological age "(Tanner, 1973)

Projiles of Children One of the objectives of this research was to ascertain if there were types of children

who are retained. In this section, we report the attempt to identify patterns of variables, or clusters of variables, that define types or profiles. The methodology used comes from the biological sciences, where classification and the creation of taxonomies has a long history.

Table 3 Means and Standard Deviations of DeBners of Three Groups of Subjects Defined by Cluster Analysis

Number of Cases with Group 1 Group 2 Group 3 Complete Data 19 21 34

x SD x SD x SD

Reading Mathematics* Visual- Motor Size Self-Concept* Piaget Total* Block Design* Vocabulary Interpersonal Relations'

30.7 24.0 40.2 3.0 10.7 .9 4.0 I .9

20.9 3.8 5.9 2.4 8.1 1.7 9.9 2.1

516.3 121.4

42.8 42.9 11.8 4. I

29.3 8.8

11.0 8.6

469.2

19.3 3.2 1.2 3.2 6.0 I .3 1.9 1.7

148.2

52.6 56.2 37.6 7.6 11.5 1.9 3.0 2.0

28.5 7.4 6.4 2.9 9. I 2.8 8.9 3.8

393.0 154.7

*Univariate F-ratio. Significant, p1 .05

Repeating the First Grade 46 1

Prior to the analysis, we decided to reduce the number of variables to relatively in- dependent measures. Through factor analytic data reduction techniques, we arrived at one score for reading, one for mathematics, one for Piagetian cognitive development, keeping as one score total self-concept, PBRS Interpersonal Adjustment, Vocabulary, Block Design, and Visual Motor Integration. Height and weight were not sufficiently in- dependent to be retained in the analysis, so a new variable, size, was calculated. (The reader may see Sandoval and Hughes, 1981, for a thorough description of the data reduc- tion and other details of this study.)

The scores for the retained children on the resulting nine immaturity variables may be used to form subgroups of children who have related patterns of scoring. This procedure is termed cluster analysis on cases and has been programmed in the Bio- Medical Statistical package BMDP2M (Dixon & Brown, 1979). The procedure is roughly analogous to factor analysis except that subjects become the items grouped into “factors” and the variables become the points of reference, or cases. The BMDP2M program uses a hierarchical method, amalgamating cases on the basis of Euclidean dis- tances between clusters of cases, starting with the first two most similar cases and con- tinuing until all cases and clusters are amalgamated into one cluster. Subgroups of children are identified that have within-subgroup homogeneity with respect to score profiles and between-subgroup heterogeneity.

The output from BMDPZM is visual and there is no single universally accepted criterion to be used in deciding where a subgroup exists. Nevertheless, the visual tree diagram does suggest two identifiable subgroups of approximately 20 cases each, plus a number of small 2-8 person subgroups. All that can be said of these latter groups is that they are largely “other” and are different from the members of the other subgroups. For the purpose of analysis, they can be kept together as a single “other” group.

These visual results must be verified and the groups defined by an examination of the group means. The resulting three groups, then, were subjected to discriminant analysis to determine if they are, indeed, separate groups and how they may be labeled.

Table 3 contains the means and standard deviations of the three groups on the defin- ing variables. The groups are different with respect to mathematics, self-concept, cognitive development, nonverbal IQ, and interpersonal skills. The standardized canonical discriminant function coefficients of the first discriminant function (eigenvalue .99, explaining 61.5% of the variance) indicate that self-concept, Vocabulary, Block Design, and Piagetian tests are most helpful in defining the groups. Group 1 has low scores on all defining variables, especially self-concept; Group 2 has high or medium scores on all definers, especially Piagetian cognitive development; and Group 3 has low math scores and low to moderate scores on cognitive development and intellectual func- tion measures.

DISCUSSION The children retained appear to have been so on the basis of academic in-

competence, low cognitive development, and low visual-motor skills; they were no different from peers with respect to size, self-concept, IQ, social skills, or age. Whether they should have been retained for various reasons is another question.

To an important extent, parents play a critical role in the decision process. A parent interview was conducted as part of this research, but the results have not yet been systematically examined. Schools make decisions on the basis of multiple criteria, often making a decision holistically. This study focused only on aspects of immaturity that could be documented easily by psychometric measures. Other factors not measured

462 Jonathan Sandoval

could have influenced the decision. Nevertheless, academic competence seems to be an important consideration of school personnel.

These data fit others concerning who is referred for psychological services. In spite of suggestions to the contrary, teachers are sensitive to the academic competence of children and are less likely to be concerned about social or emotional difficulties children encounter (Gilbert, 1957; Hyde, 1975; Nicholson, 1967; Rice, 1963).

The important point is that those retained are not homogeneous. Three groups (or at least two clear groups and a miscellaneous group) of pupils turned up. Some retained children (group 1) were very low functioning in a number of areas. Should they have gotten special education instead of having the intervention of repeating the year? Many would argue that they should.

One group was fairly high functioning as indicated by test scores. I am continuing to study this group to learn of their success in school. I do know that these children had the best prognosis and were performing higher in school one year later than other children retained. But one must ask, should they have been promoted rather than retained?

A lot of children do not fit a mold. Nonpromotion is a crude intervention. We need to know much more about children and their curriculum before we will be able to match aspects of children with aspects of the intervention to make this a valuable experience for children.

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