Selections from Joanne Jacobs

Joanne Jacobs has a couple interesting posts today.

She comments on Joe Williams' thoughts about the double standard public schools often have for charter schools. Sometimes charter schools will be closed because "the schools aren't performing well." But there are so many public schools which are also not performing well, and yet they stay open.

On to another topic, for decades the school of thought has been that it is wrong to hold back children who have not yet mastered the material for a given grade, so all the students are moved on to the next grade. This is called social promotion. Some "experts" say that if a child is forced to repeat a grade, it will hurt their self esteem. (The result of this is so many students are graduating from high school not knowing how to read or write.) Joanne has a post, Flunking succeeds in Florida, which references a study by Jay Greene and Marcus Winters. They found that when trying to track similar children, those who passed on to the next grade ended up with higher drop-out rates than the children who were held back a year. One of the nice things about home schooling is you can work with the child, no matter what level he is at.

EducationNews.org also mentions the Greene and Winter's study. Here is a brief summary.